You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag and skip,
Skip out for beer during commercials,
Because the revolution will not be televised.... The revolution will be LIVE!
Gil Scott Heron clearly never counted on BSkyB! This business is a behemoth and keeps going from strength to strength, with bags of growth potential.
- Only 5% of its revenues are generated by advertising because of its subscription model. Of course, it's unclear how well those subscriptions will hold up in a downturn. Personally, I buy the Domino's Pizza argument that customer retention could actually benefit from people deciding to stay in instead of eating out.
- Only 12% of BSkyB users take TV, broadband and telephony services, compared to 55% for Virgin Media so there's lots of scope for further cross-selling to the existing customer base.
- The company continues to innovate: Sky+ has been taken up by 46% of customers; Sky is trialling 3D television; only 7% of customer subscribe to HD, which now offers 29 channels and more than 11,000 hours of programming per month; 2011 will see the introduction of SmartTV with targeted advertising..
- The digital switchover by the end of 2012 means that up to 3.3 million analog-only TV users will be up for grabs.
When the revolution eventually comes, I bet on BSkyB being around to cover it - in HD and with freeze frame playback!
