BBC Worldwide’s European Channel business continues to provide the lion’s share of revenues, according to the annual report from the corporation’s commercial arm released today.
EMEA channels including BBC Entertainment, CBeebies and BBC HD contributed £173.4 million out of £262.6 million sales during the financial year ended March 31, 2010. In total profits across the international channels business including Australia and BBC America increased by 34.2% year-on-year to £39.2 million.
Increases in subscription revenues made a major contribution through additional carriage in Australia of CBeebies and BBC Knowledge and full-year revenues from prior-year channel launches in Australia, Scandinavia, Africa and Latin America.
Against a 7.1% decline in multichannel TV advertising, international advertising sales increased by 41.3%. In Africa sales grew by 97.3% and in Poland by 61.6%.
Included in the figures is UKTV, the 50/50 joint venture with Virgin Media, where the profit contribution was describes as “stable on prior year”.
