Sky announces TalkTalk and YouView deal
Sky has announced a new wholesale distribution agreement that will allow TalkTalk to offer its YouView customers a wide range of Sky’s standard definition entertainment, sports and movies channels in the UK.
In was announced yesterday that fellow YouView partner BT plans to start offering a bundled YouView service in the autumn.
The Humax YouView box – the DTR-T1000 – went on sale today priced at £299 in major retailers including John Lewis, Currys and Amazon.
Sky TV
According to Sky’s results announcement today, the broadcaster recorded 121,000 HD additions in the quarter, following on from its ‘Summer of Sport in HD’ campaign.
With over half a million additions across the year, HD penetration of Sky’s base has now reached 41%. Multi-room saw 24,000 net additions in the quarter to reach 2.4 million.
Overall, the 2011/12 Premier League season generated a 12% increase in average Sky audiences on the prior year.
Sky customers will have access to a number of upcoming sporting events, including golf’s US PGA Championship and Ryder Cup, US Open tennis, Test and One-Day cricket and the return of UEFA Champions League football.
Sky is also able to boast a combined reach of 25 million viewers to its entertainment channel portfolio per month.
After its move higher up the Electronic Programme Guide in February, Sky Arts strongly increased viewing share, with the Playhouse Presents series delivering the highest ever ratings for the channel.
Sky Go, Anytime+ and The Cloud
Sky Go, the broadcaster’s over the top service, was accessed by 2.7 million unique users in the quarter, up by 5% on the previous quarter. Over the next 12 months, Sky plans to extend the service to make it available to more devices and add new features such as pause and rewind, search and personal recommendations.
Anytime+ is now available to more than five million homes. The service has now surpassed one million active users in total. Sky has announced a new agreement to add free-to-air catch-up content from Channel 5 later this year, which will be available alongside catch-up content from BBC and ITV, as well as on-demand content from Sky.
The broadcaster also claims to have over 11,000 public access hotspots live across the UK following the launch of The Cloud WiFi in April.
This year, Sky plans to enhance the functionality of the Sky+ app to allow customers to use the iPad as a remote control for browsing the EPG, managing their Sky+ planner and selecting programmes to watch, pause, fast forward and rewind.
NOW TV
NOW TV, a new internet TV service giving millions more people access some of Sky’s content, launched on 17 July across a wide range of internet-connected devices.
Starting initially with Sky Movies, NOW TV offers access to more than 1,000 movies, from classic titles to the latest ‘now on DVD’ releases, on a simple, pay-as-you-go basis.
More Sky content will be added to NOW TV in the coming months, including content from Sky Sports and Sky entertainment channels.
NOW TV is available to anyone in the UK with an internet connection on devices including PC, Mac, and selected Android smartphones. The service will become available on iPhone, iPad and Xbox within the next month, on YouView when it launches and other platforms including Sony PlayStation 3 and Roku later this year. Sky estimates associated launch costs of approximately £30 million will be required for a through the line marketing campaign and support of the new product in the fiscal year to 30 June 2013.
Roku
Sky has made a $10 million equity investment in Roku, a platform that delivers over-the- top (OTT) services via its streaming devices.
This follows earlier confirmation that NOW TV will be made available through Roku’s UK devices. In addition to this carriage deal, the equity stake gives Sky the option to rebrand and distribute versions of Roku’s streaming devices in the future, should it wish to complement the OTT distribution it currently receives over third-party platforms.