Quote:
Originally Posted by AndyCambs
Let's try and put it in simple terms for you:
You buy a tin of Heinz beans from Sainsburys every week - but this week Sainsburys double the cost. You can either pay double, or find something else to eat. But you know if you pay double for the tin of beans, then you're going to have to pay double next week and so on. So you decide that you might try spaghetti instead - and find that you like it.
In this scenario - Sky artificially inflated the price of the channels, and dictated to Virgin Media that they should no longer be available on the medium television package. For all the "offers" that Sky made, the minimum price was such that it would never have been acceptable for a channel where the viewing figures have decreased over the past few years.
I can't say I really watched Sky One - it was a channel I used to hop over. I'd sometimes watch Sky Travel when I was really bored. BBC News is better presented and has won the RTE award for best news broadcasting.
Oh yes, you mention shopping around - well if you do go with Sky, then good luck - remember their broadband is upto 8MB, and very dependant on your phone line and how far you live from the exchange - I'd be lucky to get 1MB in this area. Also - just think, Sky have a large deficit to plug - around £60m is the estimate from loss of Virgin Media subscriptions and advertising - they're going to need the extra money from somewhere, and the only place left are the Sky subscribers. They've wasted quite a bit of money recently purely to annoy Virgin Media - the 17.9% stake in ITV (Murdoch doesn't invest in companies he can't control), and the £1m spent on the breakfast show on Virgin Radio immediately prior to the VM launch. You're looking for childish behaviour and someone to blame - then look squarely at Sky and the Murdoch family.
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You also missed that the tins are more tomato sauce then beans nowadays andy, good simile though. I find it all rather supect that Sky pulled out their advertising campaign the very day after the channels were dropped.
I doubt we will see any numbers too, I'm sure the proof will be in the performance of both platforms and the end of year figures.