| British Sky Broadcasting Group plc (Sky) and its subsidiaries operate a pay television service in the United Kingdom and Ireland, as well as broadband and telephony services. The Company commissions and acquires programming to broadcast on its own channels, and supplies certain of those channels to cable operators for retransmission to their subscribers in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The Company retails channels (both its own and third parties) to direct-to-home (DTH) customers and certain of its own channels to a limited number of digital subscriber line (DSL) subscribers. It also makes three of its channels available free-to-air through the United Kingdom digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform, as part of the branded Freeview offering. As of June 30, 2009, there were 9,442,000 DTH customers to its television service, and 4,271,000 subscribers of the cable operators to whom the Company supplies certain of its channels, in the United Kingdom and Ireland. |
