Juice gets the squeeze

By JO-MARIE BROWN

Sky Television's UHF subscribers in Auckland are no longer receiving Juice TV - a music channel many viewers did not realise they were getting for free.

Juice TV's programming director, Daniel Wrightson, said the channel had been pulled from the UHF frequency in Auckland.

It has not been available to Sky's UHF subscribers elsewhere in New Zealand for two years.

The channel remains on air 24 hours a day on Sky's digital service.

Mr Wrightson said Juice Music TV was a small, private company which could not afford to continue the UHF transmission.

It began broadcasting to Sky's UHF customers three years ago to boost its profile and gain viewers while the pay television operator established its digital service.

"We expanded the reach of the channel by taking UHF but it was only a temporary measure anyway," Mr Wrightson said.

"Sky never promoted it; it was just sort of a bonus for people who had it.

"It was privately funded and it was purely a service that we felt was necessary to get ourselves going."

Sky Television now had 300,252 digital subscribers and it no longer made commercial sense for Juice TV to also maintain its UHF transmission.

Sky has 140,622 UHF subscribers nationally.