BBC Worldwide says its aggregated distribution count for its global channels now tops 300 million homes. Revealing details from BBC Worldwide’s Annual Report & Accounts (to March 31 this year), chief executive Rupert Gavin said the figure included two key entertainment channels, BBC Prime’s 8.7 million subs (up from 6.9 million last year) and BBC America’s near 12 million subscriber base. BBC Prime, says Gavin, is now making a “modest profit, of below pounds1 million…and means that Prime, after five years is now making a positive contribution to Worldwide’s profitability.” Prime’s revenues grew from pounds7.3 million to pounds10.1 million.

Overall, BBC Worldwide’s sales topped a half billion pounds for the first time (at pounds514 million) a 15 per cent improvement on last year’s pounds446m.

However, there are still problems with news channel BBC World that again has cost the BBC an investment of pounds18 million “roughly in line with last year’s losses,” says Gavin. However, BBC World had just gone through a major relaunch and despite the problems “met its business plan for last year”. Ad-sales are now managed in house and total distribution grew from 135 million to 168 million homes. Gavin says he expects World to make a considerable reduction in losses this year and a “mid-decade” break-even.

As far as North America is concerned Gavin says he is now confident that BBC America will quickly move towards 35-40 million homes distribution once digital cable rolls out. The channel is already on digital satellite. He hopes that by next year the Canadian version (a joint-venture with Alliance-Atlantis) will be available.

Animal Planet, the BBC/Discovery Communications JV is now available to more than 80 million homes in the US, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, while People and Arts (also a Discovery JV) now has 10 million subs within Latin America.