Rising profits, revenue and subs signal Foxtel’s growing threat to free TV

Tim Burrowes

February 26, 2009 4:25

Pay TV service Foxtel is now in nearly 1.6m Australian households, the company said in a financial update today.

And in a sign of the platform’s growing challenge to free TV, the company said one-third of its subscribers have Foxtel IQ digital video recorder, while among new subscribers the number leaps to two thirds.

As well as pausing live television, the device poses a major challenge to brands that want consumers to watch their advertising rather than fast forwarding through it. Commentators have also suggested that it offers TV viewers better technology than that likely to be offered by Freeview or the Seven-backed Tivo device.

The company said that it made a profit of $196m in the six months to the end of the year – up 19% on the same period 12 months before.

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Tim Burrowes

Tim Burrowes is the publisher of Mumbrella and Unmade. He co-founded Mumbrella in 2008 and sister title Unmade in 2021. He's worked in the UK, Middle East, Asia & Australia and has specialised in writing about the communications world for the last 25 years. He wrote the book Media Unmade, published in 2021, and became the presenter of MediaLand on ABC Radio National in 2025.