Sky subscribers near 9 million

This article was first published on guardian.co.uk on Wednesday April 30 2008. It was last updated at 08:32 on April 30 2008.

Satellite group BSkyB added 56,000 new customers in the first quarter of 2008 to take its customer base to almost 9 million.

It was the best performance in the new year quarter, a traditionally slack time for sales, for three years.

Sky now has a total of 8,888,000 pay-TV customers in the UK and Ireland, keeping it on track to hit 10 million by 2010.

The company said that it had signed up another 262,000 customers to its personal video recorder service Sky+, putting it in 3,393,000 households, or 38% of its overall base.
Sky Broadband customer numbers were up 229,000 to reach 1,428,000 at the end of March, less than two years after the service was launched.

The company aims to have 3 million broadband customers, or 30% of its subscriber base, by 2010.

Sky said it added 43,000 high-definition subscribers, taking its tally to 465,000 at the end of March. Its Sky Talk telephone business grew by 180,000 to 1,095,000.
Churn, a measure of how many customers left the service, was 10.5%, while Arpu - average revenue per user - hit a record £424.

The company reported a loss of £118m over the nine months to the end of March, factoring in a £474m impairment resulting from the fall in the value of its 17.9% stake in ITV.
This impairment charge included £131m added in the January and March quarter to reflect the continuing decline in ITV's share price.

Sky bought its shares in November 2006 at 135p, more than double the stock's closing price last night of 64.4p.

Sky also reported that revenues were up 10% over the same period to £3.706bn, while its operating profit for the period was £504m, down 18% on last year.

1950's

-First broadcast from the house of commons
-Colour television introduced in the US
-The adventures of robin hood
-TV broadcasters begin to make more than radio broadcasters
-Festival of Britian
-Television takes advertising from newspapers
-TV begins to affect movie attendance
-TV's development forces radio to use music format
-Cable television systems begins

1960's

- Kennedy elected president
-Coronation Street begins
-Mariyln Monroe found dead
-JFK assassinated
-Top of the Pops lauches
-BBC2 launches
- England win world cup
-Man lands on moon
-Hitchcocoks ‘Pyscho’ thriller shocks the audience
-'The Sound of Music' released and becomes known as one of the best musicals of all time
-Martin Luther King Jr. Makes His "I Have a Dream" Speech
-Beatles become popular
-Networks begin showing movies during prime time
-Colour TV becomes more common
-Film industy begins using rating system

1970's

-The Beatles split
-Newsround begins
-Fawlty towers
-Microsoft founded
-Sony introduces the walkman
-Video cassette recoreder developed
-Weekly newspaper circulation grows dramatically
-Niche magazines begin boom that continues into 1990s
-HBO (home Box Office) is first subscription cable channel

1980's

-Children in need
-Prince Charles and Princess Diana wed
-Channel 4 launches
-Eastenders begins
-Satelite TV
-Compact disk invented
-CNN(cable news Network) begins operation
-MTV begins to broadcast
-USA’s national science foundation creates basis of the internet

1990's

- The Simpsons begin
-Channel 5 launches
-Teletubbies
-Titanic the most successful film ever
-News24 launches
-Newspapers go onto the internet
-Magazines begin publishing on the internet
-Cable systems experiment with movies on demand
-Talk shows gain listeners and national attention
-Total television advertising exceeds that of newspapers

2000's

-Big Brother begins
-George Bush becomes president

-Strictly come Dancing- a huge family hit
-Footballers Wives begin

-World trade center attack
-Desperate Housewives
- Walt Disney buys Pixar Animation Studios

-ITN news channel launched

MPs attack Google's web vetting record

Google's vice-president, Kent Walker, came under fire from MPs today after admitting that his company does not employ a single person to proactively vet online content and for failing to censor a YouTube video of a gang rape.
One member of the Commons culture, media and sport committee called Walker "objectionable" after he attempted to defend the mistake by YouTube, the popular video sharing website owned by Google, over the gang rape.
Walker admitted that footage of a gang rape, reported to be of a woman in south London being set upon by a group of teenagers, received 600 page views before it was taken down from YouTube last month.
He said that the incident was "clearly a mistake on our part", adding that it was one of a "tiny, tiny number of mistakes" when the company's record on censoring inappropriate content was good.
"Once flagged, more than 50% is removed within half an hour; a large majority is removed within an hour," Walker added, giving evidence to the select committee's inquiry into harmful content on the internet and in video games.
He also drew criticism from MPs on the committee after revealing that Google did not employ anyone to proactively monitor footage on YouTube.
Walker added that he was unable to disclose how many staff were currently paid by Google to reactively monitor footage flagged up by YouTube users.
His remarks prompted one committee member, Paul Farrelly, to describe Walker's defence as "incredible" and to say: "Do you know how absurd you are sounding?"
Another MP, Adam Price, went on to describe Walker's defence of his company as "deeply objectionable". He said: "It surely shows your system is completely inadequate. How can you defend that?"
Walker replied that "no system is perfect but in most cases we do get to these incidents quickly".
He added that 600 page views did not necessarily represent 600 individual viewers and went on to resist repeated calls from the committee for all submitted content to be pre-vetted, saying it would go against the spirit of the internet and stifle creativity.
"If you tried to take that vast amount of content and pre-screen all of it, it's neither efficient nor effective and would burden the process of creativity," Walker said.
"It's not a price for us I would be concerned about but a price for the user. You do not have a policeman on every street corner to stop things from happening, you have policemen responding very quickly when things do happen," he added.
Walker said that most material is not posted on YouTube for personal gain and that innocent footage posted online, such as film of a baby's first steps, would have to be scrutinised unnecessarily and at great cost.
He also defended Google's decision to allow the Chinese government to restrict content on the search engine in China.
Walker said there was a balance to strike between meeting the demands of the Chinese government and allowing his company to operate in the country.
He added that Google was promoting "free speech" in China and that it was preferable to operate there than to be banned.
Walker said that assessing the nature of content in each country where Google operated was "incredibly complicated".
He added that in Germany images of Nazi paraphernalia would be more offensive than in other countries, while in India content criticising a figure such as Mahatma Gandhi would be deemed far more offensive than elsewhere.