Digital TV News

Virgin Media customers love on-demand TV

Thursday 6 May, 2010

By Becca Talbot - becca@consumerchoices.co.uk

Customers with a subscription to Virgin Media’s TV service just can’t get enough of on-demand programmes, says the cable giant, with over 200 million on-demand views in the first three months of 2010.

Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com), the UK’s largest cable TV provider, has revealed that its customers watched over 200 million programmes on-demand in the first quarter of 2010, including shows from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Living.

The digital TV provider, which also offers broadband and phone packages, said over 2.1 million of its 3.7 million TV customers were regularly using its free catch-up service to watch popular programmes such as Glee, Shameless, EastEnders and Skins.

Virgin Media’s executive director of digital entertainment, Cindy Rose, said: “Watching TV on-demand is now part of the nations’ daily viewing habits, with millions of people tuning into the TV programmes they love when they want to watch them.”

During March alone, nearly 8 million customers watched catch-up episodes of Glee and Shameless using the 4oD service, while the 25th anniversary episode of EastEnders was viewed by more than quarter of a million subscribers after it was shown live on BBC.

Rose added that recent news from the BBC of over 120 million visits a month on the BBC iPlayer service spelled a positive future for Virgin Media’s own online on-demand service, the Virgin Media Player, which will be launched later in the year.

Last month, Virgin Media announced it had added over 38,000 new subscribers to its cable service.

Jon Ingram, operations director at Digitalchoices.co.uk, said: “These figures are fantastic, and just go to show that viewers are getting savvy to the idea of catch-up TV, watching their favourite programmes at a time that suits them.”