Virgin sells up Sit Up
April 2, 2009
Virgin Media is selling its home-shopping broadcaster Sit-up TV to Munich-based investor Aurelius – owner of RTL Shop – for an undisclosed sum. Sit-up TV operates three digital home-shopping channels – bid tv, price-drop tv and speed auction tv. Virgin said the company’s live programmes are available to viewers in more than 20m homes in the UK. Launched in 2000, Sit-up TV, generated revenues of £242m (E264m) in 2008. Virgin Media wrote down the value of Sit-up by £54.8m in February, reflecting, it said, the impact of the recession and the loss of one of its two Freeview channels.
Although there's been no cofirmation, it is widely acknowledged the rest of the Virgin Media TV arm, owner of channels such as Living and Virgin1, are now up for sale.