Sky Interactive appoints chief

BSkyB has promoted its customer marketing director Ian Shepherd to managing director of Sky Interactive.

Shepherd will continue to report to Jon Florsheim, who previously held the role in addition to his position as sales and marketing director for BSkyB.

BSkyB is hunting for a replacement for Shepherd. Until one is found, Richard Draper, who manages churn, will take on Shepherd’s former responsibilities.

As managing director for Sky Interactive, Shepherd will be responsible for the Sky Active business stream, Sky.com, other website businesses and Sky Text. His brief will be to encourage customers to use the Sky Active services, which include enhanced TV applications such as Sky Sports Active, interactive music channels, shopping and betting, in an effort to increase the average annual revenue per user (ARPU).

BSkyB aims to generate an ARPU of &£400 by the end of 2005 compared with &£366, achieved at the end of June. To help bring in extra revenue, BSkyB is launching a marketing campaign for Sky+, the integrated digital video recorder and satellite receiver, and will introduce new prices next month. The monthly &£10 fee will be waived for those customers signed up to packages with two or more of Sky’s premium sports or movie channels. Customers will still have to pay &£199 to purchase the Sky+ box.

In the autumn BSkyB will unveil an advertising campaign created by HHCL/Red Cell to promote Sky+. The aim is to increase the number of its subscribers to 300,000 by the end of June 2004 from the 105,000 who were registered at the end of June this year.