Sky's Branding

Has it though? The audience figures don't seem to indicate that.

Sky's big selling point at the moment is HD, and the poor economic climate has been been beneficial to them (and Virgin Media) because of people staying in more and wanting more to watch on the telly

Audience figures are not the same as subscriptions.

Persuading one person to drop Virgin and switch to Sky is far, far more valuable than an extra viewer watching the adverts on the channel itself.

Although, saying that, Sky Atlantic attracts a big ABC1 audience which is obviously very attractive to advertisers.

Of course not. So you mean that lots of people are subscribing to Sky to watch Atlantic.... and then aren't actually watching it?


That is true. However there are many other reasons why someone would switch. If there is a noticable churn from other platforms to Sky then it's not necessarily Sky Atlantic that's the reason for it

Unless you have evidence otherwise

Well of course, you don't watch every single programme on a channel. Say I'm a fan of Nurse Jackie and Mad Men so I switch to Sky so I can watch it. I'm only showing up as one extra viewer for one programme at present but Sky are making a lot of money from my custom.

Audience figures are a pointlessly simplistic way to look at things. I pay £40 a month to watch Sky Sports for the football, there's none on this month so I've not viewed any of their channels, but they're still getting £40.



The trends won't become clear until the channel has been on air for more than a few months but anecdotal evidence suggests it has been a good driver for new subscriptions, although maybe not as much as they'd have hoped. This is not necessarily just for people switching from Virgin to Sky, but definitely for those who are entering the subscription market for the first time.

The whole promotion has been very heavy on the HD aspect which has helped drive HD subscriptions in non-Sky Sports households too.

I'm reminded of the phrase: 'the plural of anecdote is not data'.
Sky Atlantic has been on air for 6 months so I'm sure audience research will have been done (although of course not necessarily released publicly)


I'd say almost certainly not as much as they hoped.


The HD aspect, along with their triple-play bundle are the much bigger draw, that's what they've been pushing the last 6 months.

Not from what I've seen. For the last couple of months the main campaign I see across the terrestrial channels, my girlfriend's magazines and online is 'TV, Calls and Broadband for under £20 a month', often making a point of including Sky Atlantic.

Exactly - HD and triple-play are the big pushes, with 'Sky Atlantic' tagged on

I disagree.

From where I'm standing their strategy seems to be to up-sell HD to customers, much in the same way they do with Sky Movies.

In terms of generating new custom, which is what we're discussing, Sky's marketing campaign is 'TV, Calls and Broadband for under £20' specifically including Sky Atlantic - typically no other channels are mentioned.

Just spotted that all the Sky channels (Sky1, Sky2, Living, Atlantic) don't have DOGs on them at the moment. Is this a new thing?

I don't have Sky, but it has been reported that the DOGs appear at the beginning of the programme (and after ad-breaks?) and then disappear after a couple of seconds.

Correct. DOGs are now only shown when programmes are starting, then they fade away and only re-appear again for a few seconds after the programme returns from ad break. Much much better.

the bbc should adopt that too at the moment that dog is on regardless if its HD or upscaled.