The Virgin Sky spat
04/03/07 11:35 Filed in: Personal
Virgin and Sky fall out, and everybody loses.
Okay, it happened. Virgin (the new owners(?) of
Telewest cable) have fallen out with Sky and they
didn’t make up in time for the end of the current
contract. As a result of this I, like some 3 million
other cable subscribers are now with out the main Sky
channels (Sky 1, 2 and Sky news).
The question is, am I really bothered?
Well not really, I only used to watch Sky 1 and then only for The Simpsons new episodes, which to be honest, I won’t really miss and Stargate’s SG-1 and Atlantis. Now these I will miss, especially since they are getting close to the ends of there respective series. Fortunately I have a friend who can record these to DVD for me.
So what of the spat between the two companies. Well it’s silly for a start and can only hurt all the involved parties. Both Virgin and Sky stand to lose viewers, Sky lose the 3 million cable viewers and Virgin stand to lose those that can’t stand to lose the channels(!?) And of course the customers lose out too.
I, for the record am staying with cable, the package I get from them is great (complete with 10 meg boardband!). However, since I live in managed flats, I couldn’t put a satellite dish up even if I wanted to get satellite TV.
Surly they could have come to some sort of deal? Maybe, maybe not, the one thing is sure we will never find out what actually happened at the negotiations. Both sides are blaming each other in their respective propaganda. I would tend to beleve Virgins side of the story more (sky wanted more than double the amount they get for channels with falling viewing figures), simply because it’s Virgin. And of course the public face of Virgin is good old Sir Richard Branson. In the UK he is seen as a good guy. Wether this is real or just a very good publicity department, I don’t know.
Sky is also going to pull it’s sky 3 channel from the free view terrestrial TV service in a few months time. It looks like they are trying to force people on to there own service. This doesn’t seem like either good business practice (putting all your eggs in to one basket) or very ethical behavior to me.
At the end of the day I think the two can't live with out each other, and I think (hope) that they will see this. I guess it's just a case of which party brakes and returns to the table.
The question is, am I really bothered?
Well not really, I only used to watch Sky 1 and then only for The Simpsons new episodes, which to be honest, I won’t really miss and Stargate’s SG-1 and Atlantis. Now these I will miss, especially since they are getting close to the ends of there respective series. Fortunately I have a friend who can record these to DVD for me.
So what of the spat between the two companies. Well it’s silly for a start and can only hurt all the involved parties. Both Virgin and Sky stand to lose viewers, Sky lose the 3 million cable viewers and Virgin stand to lose those that can’t stand to lose the channels(!?) And of course the customers lose out too.
I, for the record am staying with cable, the package I get from them is great (complete with 10 meg boardband!). However, since I live in managed flats, I couldn’t put a satellite dish up even if I wanted to get satellite TV.
Surly they could have come to some sort of deal? Maybe, maybe not, the one thing is sure we will never find out what actually happened at the negotiations. Both sides are blaming each other in their respective propaganda. I would tend to beleve Virgins side of the story more (sky wanted more than double the amount they get for channels with falling viewing figures), simply because it’s Virgin. And of course the public face of Virgin is good old Sir Richard Branson. In the UK he is seen as a good guy. Wether this is real or just a very good publicity department, I don’t know.
Sky is also going to pull it’s sky 3 channel from the free view terrestrial TV service in a few months time. It looks like they are trying to force people on to there own service. This doesn’t seem like either good business practice (putting all your eggs in to one basket) or very ethical behavior to me.
At the end of the day I think the two can't live with out each other, and I think (hope) that they will see this. I guess it's just a case of which party brakes and returns to the table.
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