Digital chiefs start auction TV channel

Sit-up, a television group run by two founders of ITV Digital, is launching a second live television channel later this year in a move that appears to defy the gloom currently engulfing much of the media sector.

The new channel, which will be called price-drop.tv, will aim to build on the success of the company's existing auction channel, bid-up.tv, which claims to be second only to QVC in the television shopping market-place.

The summer launch of price-drop.tv, which will introduce a falling price mechanism into an auction situation, follows a recent £5m private financing round. On price-drop.tv, the price of goods bought by customers will fall gradually until there are none left.

The company, which is 32 per cent owned by the cable group Telewest, is aiming to reach a £100m turnover target in 2003, the group's third year.

Sit-up was formed by Ashley Faull and John Egan who both quit ITV Digital more than a year before its collapse (when it was still known as Ondigital) to set up on their own.

They have studio space in Acton, west London, and plan to hire 100 new staff to service the new channel, which will be available on launch in more than 10 million households via SkyDigital, ntl home and Telewest.

The group recently appointed Robin Klein, a former managing director of marketing and home-shopping at Arcadia, as a non-executive director.