For Broadcast June 07, 2007

I'm not much of a gambler - it was Derby day last weekend and I didn't even have a flutter on Frankie Dettori. But I do know that in recent months you could've got very long odds on anyone spending £5.34m to buy a controlling stake in a participation TV technology company. You might have thought all the call-in catastrophes would have hung a huge "don't go there" sign on phone-in prospects; the whole of the ITV Play channel has been scrapped and even the BBC's flagship Blue Peter programme fell down.

But Ingenious Media Active Capital (Imac) signed a big cheque for control of Two Way TV last week, suggesting the figures still add up.

There is too much money at stake for call-in quizzes and voting to go away completely. ITV brought the phrase premium rate telephone service (PRTS) into the mainstream and ITV Play was chipping in L50m in revenues - at a very healthy margin - before it was canned.

The commercial broadcaster took another L47m last year from interactive phone quizzes and voting on its channels. The fact that PRTS revenues are down about 20% in March and April of this year was heavily flagged up by ITV, but the broadcaster is loath to say how the business might hold up in the future. This is partly because ITV - and other broadcasters - hope that confidence among consumers can be restored.

The entire PRTS market Ð not just TV, but also ringtones and even directory enquiries - is £1.2bn and Icstis estimates that broadcast PRTS services represent at least £270m a year.

Expect a little more dust to settle as the Ofcom and Icstis reviews reach their conclusions and tightened codes are put in place, but this won't be the end for more call-in concepts. We can all make a safe bet on that.

Why are digital TV's big players pushing PVRs so hard at the moment?

I had a heavy day on Monday and was too tired to watch the finale of 24 late on Sunday night. Thank god for my PVR. How many times have I said that? All the PVRs on the market have one thing in common - once you get one, you almost never go back to "old-style' viewing".

Sky, Virgin Media (VM), BT Vision and Freeview all know it and they want you to have their PVR.

The PVR is front and centre in the subscription wars for one crucial reason Ð it's a great antidote to churn. Sky now has 2 million PVR customers and added nearly 200,000 in the last quarter alone.

VM's subscribers for its V+ Drive doubled to 150,000 in the last quarter. How many other things did the old NTL/Telewest conglom have to celebrate? It knows the value of a PVR-enabled home and is following Sky's lead in cutting the monthly PVR cost to subscribers.

BT Vision's PVR technology and Freeview's Playback are coming into the market fast. Research from Enders Analysis predicts there will be 12.75 million PVR boxes in use by analogue switch-off in 2012; nearly half are forecast to be Sky+ boxes, one third Freeview and the rest (less than one sixth) cable and BT.

Viewed relative to the size of the operators' customer footprint, according to Enders, cable and BT will have about 50% PVR penetration versus a third of all Freeview homes having a PVR. And Sky? Nearly two-thirds of Sky homes are forecast to be PVR-enabled by 2012.

And PVRs will be even more important as broadband TV starts encouraging viewers to watch shows on their PCs. Online is a place where the interactive and storage nature of the PVR comes into its own Ð expect even more competitive offers as the big four battle to make their PVRs P-A-Y.