Virgin Media

If ever there was a time to revisit the conflict of interest between Sky's platform and Sky's channels being controlled by the same company, this is it.

Sky decided to double carriage charges for their channels, feebly claiming it only represents additional investment when it doesn't, so Virgin either cough up and line Sky's pockets further, or they loose the channels and risk loosing customers to Sky.

The website trying to turn it into Virgin's fault is singly the most vomit inducing pieces of propaganda that I've ever seen from them.

In cabled areas cable is often more popular than Sky because it usually offers better deals - last year we got basic tier cable included with our broadband for free, and could have upgraded it to include premium channels for less than the same channels cost on Sky itself.

Sky's activities lately, having all but confirmed the end of the 3 FTA channels on Freeview to replace them with a pay TV operation, and now trying to deliberately push people away from cable by pricing their channels out of the market even though cable will never be a serious threat to them because it will never match their coverage, are very worrying and need to be stopped.

They've argued their way into to allowing BSkyB to continue to exist because they've always claimed to be a broadcaster interested in it's channels being available on other platforms - and pointed to it's presence in the Freeview consortium as proof of this to dodge the issue a few years ago. Now, in the space of a couple of weeks, they have shown themselves clearly to be interested only in a monopoly on satellite.

I do wonder though if this will backfire on them - if I was in that position now, I'd probably just go for Freeview, even if the 3 Sky channels are about to disappear. Alternatively, owning complete archives of programmes on DVD is now viable in terms of space, time and money than it ever was before (the days of paying £14.99 for a VHS tape with two episodes released every 3 weeks are long gone). Maybe more people will do that than they bargained on.

Although inevitably some people will switch, will the new customers make up for the shortfall of loosing Virgin's carriage fees?

am i being slow - or are media guardian up to their old tricks again and being a bit slap-dash with their journalism?



and yet the article does not refer to nbc at all - only the deal with abc.



whilst the dcms site states that "just under 72% of UK households have chosen to go digital" ... ie the 'just under 72%' is the combined figure for dsat, cable and dtt, not the combined figure for subscription services on dsat, cable and top-up tv.

but as we know - they have been slap-dash in the past attributing national combined audience figures for regional programmes to london regional programmes.

Thing is though, Sky took a massive gamble in launching satellite TV in this country. The channels are theirs. Surely they're entitled to charge what the hell they want.

Virgin aren't massive underdogs here. NTL and Telewest were owned by some of the biggest cable companies in the world. But they made a massive mess of trying to launch cable exclusive channels to compete with Sky (L!ve TV anyone?)

Further reading on this is available in the L!ve TV book - very much recommended

I know Sky are at it. I know they've probably deliberately provoked this to cause Virgin Media some major problems when they've just rebranded. But personally I don't give a toss how Virgin get out of this - they've got to, otherwise we're going to lose some major Sky channels. And they're going to lose a hell of a lot of subscribers.

I proberly would to save the fuss of switching.



I take no sides, both are giving different stories. Toyed with getting Sky+ in the first place anyway but I made the wrong choice. Its The Simpsons I can live without sky1 to be honset i'll just download them all via torrent. I toyed with that idea before getting the service but I figured "oh if I get sky1 for brainiac, the simpsons is on everyday so why bother downloading them".

My main beef is that I was downloading Brainiac episodes last year and got telewest mainly so I could watch them properly but now Sky One is leaving the platform I loose the main foundation for me having their service in the 1st place. So I got it for nothing.

Interestingly there's a Virgin ad having a right go at Sky in the News of the World...

Agree with everything you've said there - it's a view I've long had aswell.

It was recognised by the ITC in relation to digital terrestrial - both when ON Digital and Freeview launched, with Sky being forced to be just a content provider rather than part of the consortium running the service. The same rule should throw their DTT plans out too - and if they take anti-competitve practices seriously, it should apply to digital satellite as well.


If we were in a cable area I'd definately consider it, especially with the added attraction of VoD. I don't think it would cost us significantly more than what we currently pay for phone / broadband to get the three in one deal.


Sky's surf, see, speak deal looks equally tempting on the surface, but I don't like their "pick and mix" set up at all. Also, Sky only care about gettning new customers - once your in the deals are gone!


Their demands for more money is a non-starter considering they are paying Virgin only 25% of their former rates. In fact, if any subscription digital channel has been continuously growing over recent years it be Living TV!

Good, so they should.

I'm interested to know which side Sky customer's on this board are on - Sky or Vigin?

Whole heartily agree with you there Wathen.

I find it amazing that people are saying that they will now switch to Sky just for Sky One. Dont these people consider the phone and broadband side of things aswell?

Sky has always been over-priced imho and its only lately that the price structure has become anywhere near acceptable. Sky still want to increase the ARPU even higher but the products that they actually deliver havent really improved at all lately.

A lot of people boycott certain companies for a variety of reasons like animal testing, non-UK call centres etc etc and I for one will NOT be switching to Sky just because they are losing a few relatively unimportant channels.

Im sure Virgin have a lot of ideas up their sleeves and will try even harder to retain current customers by offering more incentives to stay. Its quite interesting that Virgin have acquired the VOD rights for some great new series!

Indeed, Sky One now sells itself mainly on The Simpsons - that's about the only big programme left that they show way before their FTA counterparts. The only other US programmes of note are 24 and Battlestar Galactica, all of which get repeated reasonably quickly.

It's not like the days when Sky One was home to The Simpsons, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Friends and ER, all more than a year before any FTA channel got their hands on them (and indeed for a while The Simpsons was an exclusive).

As a channel it's nowhere near such a big deal anymore. If I had it and lost it I'd be mildly annoyed, but there's no way I'd switch just for the sake of Sky One.


What massive gamble? At launch all they had was a channel they had bought and which had allready been broadcasting on satellite for years, a joint venture with the EBU in Eurosport, a second rate film channel, and Sky News. Meanwhile they were carried on the then new Astra satellite at a knockdown price as Astra wanted to secure enough broadcasters to justify the construction of a second satellite. The investment in Sky News was a risk certainly, but it never represented a 'massive gamble' which would have serious repurcussions if it failed.

The analogue Sky service had no platform or infratructure at all when it launched - the receivers were manufactured by Amstrad and responsibility on getting shops to buy them were theirs. Once sold, they were the property of the retailer and responsibility for shifting the stock was theirs. The installations were done by local aerial installers and stocking the equipment and going through the training necessary to do satellite installs was their problem. Sky was little more than a content provider which was marketed succesfully enough for others to set up an infrastructure for people to watch the channels.

Expansion, adding encryption, and getting involved with marketing the equipment themselves only happened *after* it had proved itself. Even then, it wasn't until Sky Digital launched in 1998 that they had a proper platform with serious investment made.

This doesn't alter the conflict of interest which exists. Sky haven't marketed their channels and their service as one cosy discrete entity which they don't want to separate. For over 10 years they have positioned themselves clearly as a hardware platform interested in subscribers, and also as a content provider interested in selling their content to other broadcasters fairly. This has made them the powerful operation that they are, but having built themselves up on the basis of being a two tier operation they've then spent the last 5 years or so trying to pull the rug out and turn their channels into an exclusive club for Sky subscribers whilst claiming that they're not.

Even now they're still not accepting that they don't want Virgin to have these channels - they're deliberately trying to charge an uncompetitive price for them (a 100% price increase is never justifiable) and then try to turn the tables on Virgin for not paying it.

This is not on. Sky put themselves in the position of having their content available outside of satellite, they now have to live with it. If they cannot maintain this position as one company, then they should be split into two, for the good of the viewers and of the other platforms which use them as content providers.

I've read that book, and it does seem they shot themselves in the foot by signing the fateful "sweetheart deal" with Sky.

I totally agree. I certainly wont be switching to Sky just to get Sky One. Sky is just too expensive IMO.

I've got to admit, I'm veering towards the side of Sky here. I mean, the channels in question are essentially theirs, to do what they wish with, so if they want to restrict them to Sky only then they are free to do so. Why should they make them available to Virgin?

The fact that the VM channels are pretty lame is not the fault of Sky - under Flextech's ownership, there was plenty of opportunity to develop Bravo, Living, Challenge, Trouble and FTN into decent channels by bidding for decent rights - like has been done with Sky One. 24, Lost, The Simpsons and any of the series on Sky One could potentially have been bought by other channels. Why should Sky allow another company to have access to what is essentially one their biggest selling points?

It's all very well feeling sorry for Virgin playing the innocent victim card, but maybe they should be focusing their attentions on building up some sort of unique selling point instead of relying on Sky to provide it for them.