Quote:
Originally Posted by Saneboy13
So you are telling me that as a customer, you would be willing for VM to pay almost £40million extra on top just to keep a few channels?
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I have no idea what the exact amount to may was, so I can't comment on that directly, but I am sure that some reasonable deal between the two could have been met with a little negotiation, but Virgin left the negotiations and began its PR campaign instead.
There would always be another couple of possibilities too. Make the sky channels premium channels (eg. like the Disney channel used to be, for example, £5 a month, or like Sky One used to be, £1 a month). That way, those that want Sky could pay, those that didn't wouldn't need to.
There's also the offer Sky gave, which was to handle the feed directly and market it to customers, and deal with the costs themselves, thus relieving Virgin of having to handle the costs.
I get the impression that with a little negotiating from both sides, the entire situation could have been resolved. It might be the wrong view, but from following the developments as they happened, it seemed like Sky was working hard to adapt their offer, throw in new channels, and striving to reach a deal, wheras Virgin gave their deal, walked away, and refused to negotiate - take their deal or nothing. Of course, this could be easily mistaken and there's much in the background we just don't know. I personally wonder if Virgin hoped that if they gave the flextech channels to Sky for cheaper, Sky would do the same to them, thus enabling them to cut costs and tout how their service was better and try to get more people to switch to cable - only it backfired, and they ended up losing money on the flextech channels to Sky, and getting nothing back, and now they're trying to find a way out.