Canal+ has converted 348,000 subscribers to its terrestrial based analogue service to digital since the beginning of the year. The French pay-TV giant said the transition had brought its digitization portfolio rate up to 90% from the 78% of 12 months ago.
Canal+ Group revenues reached €3,368 million, an increase of 1.1%. Subscriber numbers at Canal+ France grew by 177,000, when last year’s portfolio is taken into account. No new subscriber totals were released. However, the company said the total of all individual and collective subscriptions to Canal+, including France, the overseas territories (DOM-TOM) and Africa stood at 5.2 million.
Group EBITA amounted to €754 million, a €133 million increase compared to the same period in 2008, and benefiting from recent price increases and the full effects of the TPS merger.
For Canal+, the income from subscriptions totaled year-to-date €1,330 million as compared to €1.357 million for the first nine months in 2008. Income from subscriptions only went down from €1,290 million to €1,206 million. Advertising in come over the period went up from €92 million to €94 million.
The company added that Canal+ is the only “traditional” broadcaster in France that did not lose viewing share to the new digital terrestrial channels with an audience share of 4.2% during the period January – September 2009.
