The television company BSkyB says it now has nearly six million households subscribing to its digital satellite services.

But the company lost nearly �1.3bn in the nine months to the end of March, mainly because of the collapse of the German company Kirch Pay TV in which it had a big stake.

And Sky was owed �22m by the UK company, ITV Digital, when it collapsed.

The group reported an operating profit - which reflects performance of the core business, before one-off items - of �129.3m, an increase of 33% compared with the same period the previous year.

Losing viewers

BSkyB said that the supply of Sky channels to ITV Digital had made a material contribution to that operating profit.

Now that ITV Digital has gone out of business, Sky said it was trying to find ways of ensuring its channels would still be available on the digital terrestrial television platform.

The churn rate, that is the number of viewers cancelling their subscriptions, was 10.5%.

This number has fallen and is considerably lower than the churn rates for the cable companies.

Fall in advertising

NTL has been losing 21.3% of viewers a year, Telewest has a churn rate of19.1% and before ITV Digital's collapse, 23% of customers were turning off.

Sky has also been hit by the downturn in the advertising market.

Its advertising revenue fell by 11%.

BSkyB's chief executive, Tony Ball, said: "Sky is reporting another strong set of results today, demonstrating that Sky digital continues to make progress on all fronts."