Last financial year, Sky TV posted a $241 million annual loss and was unable to stem the flow of subscribers.

Sky Television is hailing a promotion under which it opened up all Sky's satellite subscription channels to customers over the holiday season as a success, but is not saying whether it may be repeated.

The promotion came after a rough 12 months for Sky that saw Spark compete aggressively for sports rights and its share price settle at record lows below $2 – and ahead of a crunch year that will see it step up its efforts to stem customer defections.

Spokeswoman Chris Major said preliminary data suggested its two-week "Go Large" promotion lifted Sky's share of television viewing 5 per cent, to about 61 per cent, in households that have Sky.

TOM PULLAR-STRECKER/STUFF Sky TV says its summer promo boosted viewing of its channels by younger viewers in particular but took "many weeks work" to arrange.

The increase was more marked for viewers in the 25 to 54 age group, with Sky's share of their viewing increasing by 14 per cent, to reach 62 per cent.

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Sky let customers watch all its non-pay-per-view sports, entertainment and Sky movie add-on channels during the promotion which ended on January 7, regardless of the plan they were on.

"It was pleasing to see an increase in the amount of viewing of Sky channels over the two week period of the gift," Major said.

However, she indicated the promotion had not been easy to arrange because of its supply contracts.

"We have a large number of contracts with different channel providers and it took many weeks' work to 'unlock' the rights on all channels."

Major indicated there would be other promotions in the pipeline as Sky seeks to protect its customer base from competition from the likes of Netflix and Spark.

These would include building on its existing "Sky Perks" programme, she said.

New chief executive Martin Stewart is due to take over at Sky on February 21.

SUPPLIED Optus D1 satellite (above) is coming to the end of its life and Sky says a new $200m deal on a new satellite will provide it with greater flexibility to reduce or increase its channel capacity.

He is understood to have been given a mandate to take greater risks to accelerate its transformation into a "multi-platform" company that also delivers programming over broadband.

Central to that plan will be the launch of a new range of set-top boxes and software later this year that will provide a more sophisticated, Netflix-like electronic programming guide that viewers will use to select programmes delivered via satellite and over the internet.

The new on-screen guide will also recommend programmes to customers, based on data that Sky has already begun collecting on their viewing habits.

Sky announced in December that it had reached a new agreement with satellite operator Optus that would allow it to continue to provide a satellite television service until 2031 on a new satellite to be launched by Optus.

The satellite will replace Optus' D1 satellite which is near the end of its life.

Major said the new agreement would provide Sky with more flexibility over the capacity it leased from Optus, so it could "reduce or increase the amount of capacity we take depending on the needs of our customers".

The deal would provide Sky with sufficient capacity to upgrade channels to the higher-definition 4K and 8K formats in time, she said.

4K television – which supports double the pixels of "1080" HD television – was likely to "dominate" over the life of the deal, but 8K television which provides double the resolution of 4K was coming, she said.

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