Wellington, Feb 19 NZPA - MySky subscribers helped boost Sky Television's half year profit 19.1 percent to $50.7 million, but the pay television company says it has struggled to attract new customers over summer and is being hammered by a depressed advertising market.

Operating revenue was up 6.6 percent to $369m for the six months to the end of December and the improved financial results could be attributed to the success of the MySky HDi decoder, launched in August 2008, chief executive John Fellet said today.

At the end of the year MySky HDi subscribers had more than doubled from 70,384 in December 2008 to more than 144,000.

Most of them, 83 percent, had crossed over from Sky's standard digital decoder and HDi subscribers now accounted for 18.8 percent of Sky's satellite subscriber base.

The average revenue per user rose from $63.49 to $67.35, primarily due to the increase in MySky subscribers.

A large increase of 44,877 satellite subscribers was partly due to UHF subscribers leaving the 20-year-old analogue network before it is decommissioned next month.

But Mr Fellet said Sky had struggled to attract as many new customers over the summer months.

In the six months subscribers grew by just 5976 compared to 10,493 over the same period last year. The poor numbers had continued into January.

However, with some winter sports starting up Sky expected there would be more interest in people signing up.

Sky now has 784,878 subscribers, 3 percent up on the 759,069 at the same time last year.

Mr Fellet also voiced concerns about declining advertising, where Sky fared worse than the total market.

"We continue to be operating in the most depressed television advertising market ever seen in New Zealand and Sky, like other television broadcasters, is being severely impacted."

In the six-month period the total television advertising market declined by 10.9 percent compared to the same time last year, and December recorded the sixth shrinking quarter in a row for total television advertising market revenue.

Sky's advertising revenues fell 16.3 percent to $27.6m. Advertising now represents 7.5 percent of Sky's total revenue, he said.

Shares in Sky TV were unchanged at $4.71 today. The company will pay a dividend of 7 cents per share.