[GuestUK]

Originally Posted by Saneboy13

The cost was just shy of £40million extra sky wanted for VM to carry those channels. As for your quote about sky offering to carry the feed themselves, I don't know where you get that from, but it's total rubbish.

I apologise, poor choice of words on my part, I was referring to Sky's offer to Virgin to directly retail and transmit the channels to Virgin customers over the Virgin network at no cost to Virgin.

The bottom line to this is that sky wanted, no needed the extra money to keep that channel cost effective. They are making a huge loss on it themselves and saw VM as an easy target. Don't forget, Sky started the PR exercise first, telling VM customers to ring the call centre and tell the people that they wanted VM to keep sky one.

While if I recall correctly Sky did begin by broadcasting messages on its channels that Virgin customers may lose channels if an agreement wasn't reached which Sky claim was to let customers know what was going on, Virgin began with the campaign saying they were going to lose the channels and that Sky had stopped negotiating, which Sky claimed was untrue, and that they were surprised Virgin took to the press and withdrew from negotiations. While I agree that Sky's actions were questionable, Virgin's leaps to the press and big press announcements with their own twists seem moreso, although what really was happening behind the scenes we don't know.

If you look at the costs sky have with sky one you then start to better understand the whole situation. With Nip/Tuck, Bones, Stargate, 24, Lost for them to purchase that lot by season you are looking at many millions of pounds (tens of millions in fact). That was and is sky's main reason for wanting to hike up the prices. 3p per customer per day does not sound much until you work it all out and it comes to near the £40 mil I said earlier.

Sky have invested in expensive programming and helping to make their channel more attractive, and as a result the costs for ccarriage of the channel may increase. Surely it is only reasonable that Virgin would need to pay more for a channel with more investment and more expensive content?

I know it's an inconvenience to some people, but what do you want? do you want strong competition or do you want VM to say "Yes Mr Murdoch, how much more do you want us to give you today"?

I am all for competition, but I think the way this has been handled by both sides very badly. I agree with the NCC which stated that they believed what had happened to not be in the best interests for customers, plus the deeper issues in the market which this disagreement highlighted.

Originally Posted by NCC

Our concern is that this dispute may expose a more fundamental flaw in the digital television market, and the extent to which it is competitive for consumers.

The National Consumer Council will be examining these questions as a matter of urgency, with a view to deciding whether to exercise our statutory powers under the Enterprise Act. If necessary, we will refer this market to the regulator using our power to bring a ‘supercomplaint’. In the meantime, we urge the two companies to put consumers first, by reaching a speedy solution and being crystal clear about customers’ rights.

For those that don't like the channels, it's meaningless, and to some who aren't keen on the channels, it is perhaps inconvenience, but to those that really like the channels in question and signed up to Virgin to receive those channels it is a pain. I've read the majority of messages on the fairplay "message board" Virgin put up, and there was a resounding view that the majority of people liked the channels and want them back. I'd argue that this is more than a minor inconvenience.

As for competition, is it good for competition that Virgin have total control over their network and nobody else can have acces to it, thus if Virgin want to block a channel they can. If a channel may compete with a venture they are working on, they can deny them access, if they dislike the company makiing the channel, they can deny it, if they have personal reasons regardless of consumer interests, they can deny it, unlike Sky who have an open platform.