BSkyB subscribers pay £444 a year on average to the satellite broadcaster, but despite the expense - a fair proportion of any domestic budget - yesterday's results showed no sign of any slowdown amid the economic downturn.

Jeremy Darroch, chief executive, said he believed that consumers were deciding to spend less on going out and using some of the savings on pay-television. To illustrate the point, figures released this week show that television viewing by adults has reached a record high of 26hours, 18 minutes a week. The resilience was seen in interim results, in which Sky - 39.1 per cent-owned by News Corporation, parent company of The Times - produced pre-tax profits of £276million, ahead of most City forecasts. It was enough to lift the shares 13 per cent to 490p, the highest level since the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and to give the company confidence to announce the creation of 1,000 new engineering and customer service jobs at a time when almost nobody else is hiring.

Against the backdrop, it is hardly surprising that Sky is considering introducing 3-D television. In a way, it is not a technology that anybody needs - the existing viewing experience on high definition ought to be good enough for anybody - but Sky customers are showing such willingness to pay for new services - and the cost of 3-D is finally becoming manageable - that there is every reason to believe that it can work commercially.

Advertisers may be slashing their spending on television, but, as far as the public is concerned, it is more important than ever.

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