MySky keeps profits soaring at Sky TV

Sky TV's Auckland control room. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Sky Television's half yearly profits have jumped 19 per cent as advertisers begin spending again with the pay-tv network.

Sky recorded a profit of $60.4 million for the half year to December, 31 2010 - up from $50.8 million from the same period the year before.

Overall revenue was up 7.8 per cent to $398 million, boosted by a 26 per cent increase in advertising sales.

The growing popularity of the MySky device - which allows subscribers to pause, rewind and record television shows - also contributed to result.

The company now has just over 230,000 MySky customers, up 60.3 per cent.

MySky users make up almost a third of the network's customers.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) was up 11.3 per cent to $161.1 million.

Sky gained customers around 5000 over the period, this was down slightly from the year before and 50 per cent less growth than the same period in 2008.

Company chief executive John Fellet said half-yearly growth bounced back from a poor early performance.

"We had a terrible July and August, we had bad numbers and were down 3000 behind [the number of new customers during the same period the year before]. September, October was about the same but November, December, January and now February, things are definitely improving. We hope we've got through the bottom of the recession," Fellet said.

While standard programming was still the main focus of the network, Fellet said the growing popularity of Sky on Demand and internet service iSKY showed more customers want to pick and choose their own content.

iSKY was launched last month and allows current subscribers to re-watch programs on their computers, or watch a selection of movies from the SKY catalogue at their leisure.

Use of the site was over two times higher than the company predicted.

Although iSKY appealed to the dot com generation, Fellet said use had been high throughout SKY's customers.