Sky's Branding

My take on this...

It's been known for some time that Sky has been constrained by the higher rates that Discovery wants to charge. BT's also been hit by the wrangling from Discovery, but TalkTalk backed down and removed the Discovery channels last June. They're all cosy with Virgin though as they signed a deal with them for carriage last year.

Sky abusing its dominant market position? No - it's been facing competition from the likes of Netflix, Amazon Prime and in its traditional market, BT and Virgin, and its pay TV business is reaching the threshold at which it can gain subscribers (which is also why NOW TV exists). The Discovery Channel is one of the main big pay TV channels for Sky, and removing them will do neither any favours. Sky will have to contend with the loss of a huge contributor to its pay TV service - and Discovery's reach overall will drop (Sky is mainly the most watched platform for Discovery channels), and not even having Quest on Freeview will stop it.

Guess that includes Eurosport too. I think this would hurt Discovery far more than Sky.

Further to my previous conversation on here about whether Sky were struggling financially, I got an email today from them announcing further price rises next month.

My broadband charge is going up by 30%, the Sky Talk line rental AGAIN, by about 20%, and their call charges (which I don't pay as I have Sky Mobile) by another undetermined amount.

Has Sky's business model fallen apart? If so, this demand for a higher share from Discovery Networks isn't going to help, is it?

That seems a huge hike, though from other reports my understanding was the broadband charge now includes the line rental, so perhaps that is going up but you won't pay the separate line rental fee.

I hate this bundling though - really think it makes contracts more confusing rather than simpler and both BT and Sky seem to stagger rises to confuse you even more.

Welcome to the world of quad-play..
Pay TV, landline, mobile, interweb.

Why be confused with one price structure, when they can baffle you with 4?

Actually legacy Sky TV packages are also being hiked too, not just the broadband and line rental.



The concept of broadband and phone line together in one price is a ridiculous one - I'm only paying effectively £25 a month as it is for fibre and phone. The offering of my provider's new "all inclusive" package for the same damn product is £33 a month.

Ofcom suggest the actual costs of line rental wholesale is falling and has been for ages, and I've long suspected the broadband/fibre aspect of things is partially or significantly subsided from the line rental costs.

So, while searching around on Vimeo about Sky, I discovered this user called redostler who posts these Sky promos, and other stuff, and I noticed this board right here. I don't know if this was used.

I think this was originally going to be the trailer endboard but was altered and used as a break bumper for most Sky branded channels

I've noticed recently that Sky have finally made a new Sky Store logo but for some reason, it is not being used on the adverts

How much use does Sky Store actually get? Probably not that much in lieu of the deal they did at Christmas where you either had 3 months access to the box sets or a £13.99 voucher for the Store and the fact a large chunk of what is sold in the store is/was on demand as part of your Sky Movies/Cinema subscription.

I assume the service barely profits from its customers, considering you can't buy films in HD, the quality of the films are just appaling and they have no relationship with On Demand what so ever! If anything, they should just bring back Sky Cinema Box Office

You can buy films in HD to stream - but you only get a physical copy on DVD.