Twenty-First Century Fox 2004 Annual Report Download - page 27

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Direct Broadcast
Satellite Television
NEWS CORPORATION ANNUAL REPORT 2004
BRAVO, SKY ITALIA
EXCLUSIVE GUIDE TO NEW TECHNOLOGY
Viewers Tune In To DIRECTV
New management sets strategy focused
on making DIRECTV’s satellite television
operations the world’s best viewing
experience. Report, next page
News Corporation’s 80 per-
cent-owned direct-to-home
satellite broadcaster, SKY
Italia, launched early in
fiscal 2004 and sparked a rush
by consumers to get the best
pay-TV packages ever offered
in Italy.
SKY Italia was formed
from the April 2003 merger of
Stream and Telepiu, the for-
mer competitors in the
Italian pay-TV market, and,
after a massive restructuring,
its new programming slate
and marketing campaign
were launched just three
months later.
Already the significant
losses News Corporation
experienced from its 50
percent ownership of Stream
have been dramatically
reduced. SKY Italia finished
the year with nearly 2.7
million subscribers, an addi-
tion of more than one million.
With the closure in late
2003 of Telepiu’s costly and
low capacity analog network,
SKY’s entire subscriber base
is now digital. Since SKY
Italia’s launch, more than
95 percent of subscribers
have purchased premium pro-
gramming packages, pushing
average subscription revenues
per residential subscriber
to the equivalent of US$605
a year.
SKY Italia acted decisively
to eliminate the threat of
piracy, announcing in May
2004 that by December it
would swap-out the old
Telepiu encryption system
to utilize the highly effec-
tive technology of News
Corporation’s 78 percent-
owned subsidiary, NDS.
25