[GuestUK]

To me, there seems to be something odd in the way the flextech and sky deals were done. From an interesting interview in the guadian with Murdoch

Originally Posted by James Murdoch

Our Sky Basics deal was originally due to expire simultaneously with the Flextech deal. But they asked us if we would be willing to extend that deal by three months - we did not understand it at the time. But we did it - losing some money - because we figured they had just done the merger and had not got their act together. But maybe it was because they wanted it to come up right after their relaunch.

Edit: Also of interest - seems Sky offered Virgin the ability to retail their channels themselves with full control and profits, although Virgin turned it down

We operate an open platform. We prepared for them, prior to the renewal of their retail carriage agreement, a whole open access package that would have allowed them to retail their Flextech channels. They did not want to do that, perhaps because they did not want to take the risk. We offered to do the same deal with our channels on Virgin.

It seems odd that they would put themselves in such a position, as well as taking the cuts that they did, unless there was something happening in the bigger picture - or perhaps I'm reading too much into it.