Sky to launch £75m adverts campaign

13 April 2012

RUPERT Murdoch's SKY TV outfit will tomorrow launch its biggest advertising campaign since launch in 1998 in a bid to hit chief executive James Murdoch's target of increasing subscribers from 7m to 10m by 2010.

The £75m campaign aims to change Sky's image from a hi-tech service specialising in football and films to an all-round service.

The ads will highlight popular shows such as 24, blockbuster films and natural history documentaries at lower price subscription packages.

Meanwhile Sky Italia chief executive Tom Mockridge stood by the money-losing, pay-TV company's aim for 3m subscribers by Christmas and Rupert Murdoch's recent forecast of 4m by the end of 2005.

'Rupert said it, so it must be true,' said.

Murdoch senior, chairman and chief executive of Sky Italia's parent company News Corp, set a target of 3m subscribers last year which it failed to reach, then refixed it for this year. He announced the 4m figure earlier this month.

The firm, which launched in August 2003, has 2.7m customers at present.

Analysts have been sceptical about the forecasts. Although Sky Italia holds a monopoly in the Italian satellite TV market, it is facing increased competition from terrestrial players as they branch into digital TV and the pay-per-view market.

There were reports that Sky Italia was considering complaining to European anti-trust regulators about government subsidies for digital TV set-top boxes and that it asked Italian officials to subsidise satellite TV set-top boxes.

Mockridge denied this. 'We're doing neither,' he said. 'We're neutral on the issue (of subsidies).'

He declined to comment on the much lower-than-expected price paid this week by News Corp to take full control of Sky Italia.

News Corp paid former partner Telecom Italia €88m for 19.9% of Sky Italia. Goldman Sachs estimates Sky Italia is worth $3.4bn.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in