MEDIA AND MARKETING/Emmet Oliver: NTL disclosed this week it now has 38,000 subscribers to its NTL Digital service.

This nugget of information will interest everyone in the television game as it shows that Rupert Murdoch's Sky, with 272,000 digital subscribers, has a huge lead over its main rivals, NTL and Chorus, at least based on the national picture.

With the vast majority of the Irish population still with cable or MMDS, the battle between Sky and the two cable companies for a foothold in the digital marketplace might appear a little academic. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Technologists and investment analysts believe that ultimately digital television is what most of us will have in our living rooms within a few years. As of now, Sky looks like being the company which will control much of this technology, but several obstacles look like halting, or at least slowing down, its onward march. One of these is that, at present, consumers who switch to Sky Digital cannot get Channel 4 or UTV. Sky's rivals, particularly Chorus, gleefully point out that Sky has this hole in its digital offering and Sky executives are very keen to fill this gap.

"We would welcome UTV and Channel 4 to our platform as soon as possible," says Mr Mark Deering of Sky Ireland. However, he says Sky can do little about the situation and the two channels themselves must obtain the rights to broadcast via satellite into Ireland.

But observers believe the absence of Channel 4 and UTV, which carry a range of popular programmes, is a significant limit on the company's expansion in Ireland.

The other question which hangs over its further expansion is how much more growth is there in the digital marketplace in the short and medium term?

Most basic cable/MMDS packages give viewers 13 or 14 stations, including the most popular such as RTÉ, TV3 and BBC. How many more people want additional channels on top of that via digital?

Mr Deering says plenty. "Viewing habits have changed and viewers want more choice. It is important that is provided to them." He says Sky now has the capacity to provide up to 350 channels via some of its digital packages and certainly the numbers signing up would seem to suggest there is a demand.

However, there is a large rural element to Sky's numbers, with NTL able to keep Sky at bay in its Dublin patch, at least for the moment.

Internet traffic

A number of major Irish websites, including ireland.com, have signed up for a new web traffic measurement service, the JNIR (Joint National Internet Research) survey. Many sites are already measured by the "ABC-e" system, which measures every visitor that a website receives on a total basis, under a strict set of rules laid down by ABC, as opposed to a sample-based system.

JNIR is being driven by the Institute of Advertising Practitioners Ireland and is due to launch its preliminary results on Friday April 11th, with official results expected two weeks later. JNIR will work in much the same way as JNRR does for print media and JNLR for broadcast media. It is a sample-based survey which will focus on the demographics of the website visitor and is aimed primarily at marketing managers and the advertising industry. JNIR has signed up a number of websites to begin with, including Irishjobs.ie, ireland.com, Irish Independent/Unison, Thomas Crosbie Holdings, RTÉ, Entertainment Ireland and Yahoo.

Online winners

AMAS, the online content and marketing company, set up two years ago by two former senior executives from the publishing trade, has won a north-south contract. The company is run by Ms Aileen O'Toole, co-founder and former deputy editor of The Sunday Business Post, and Ms Maeve Kneafsey, former chief executive of magazine publisher, Hoson.

AMAS has won the contract for an undisclosed sum to create and manage the online activity of Safefood, the north-south body responsible for the promotion of food safety and nutrition. A second contract, to design and develop the new Safefood website, has been won by AMAS in partnership with the web design and development company, Arekibo Communications. The website is under construction and will be launched this summer.

Sassoon in the bin

Legendary hair stylist Vidal Sassoon appears to be having a bad hair day, claiming his famous brands spend more time in the bargain bins than on the shelves, all because of Proctor and Gamble (P&G). The man, whose name adorns millions of bottles of shampoo, has just filed a lawsuit against the giant P&G, which owns all his brands. He claims P&G are responsible for systematic neglect, mismanagement, sabotage, fraud and breach of contact.

Any media, marketing or advertising news or comment, please email Emmet Oliver at eoliver@irish-times.ie