How to skin a potato

WHEN BSkyB, a British satellite-television broadcaster owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, pulls the plug on its old-fashioned analogue service this summer and becomes a digital-only provider, it will be the world's first nationwide analogue broadcaster to make the switch. Thanks mainly to the decision by BSkyB and rival British cable companies to give away the set-top boxes through which their channels are received, digital television is now pumped into no fewer than 27% of British homes, a greater share than in America (see chart). And, this figure is expected to leap to 72% by 2005.