Quote:
Originally Posted by zantarous
Theres no money to be made from that, only a small percentage of Virgin viewers will be HD capable and on Sky they can get a bigger reach and get some of the Sky subscription money, or better yet maybe some Sky HD channels. There is no benefit for the consumer for exclusive channels.
|
There's no money to be made from HD simulcasts anyway.
I've said this a million times but people still keep banging on about how it's not viable to have a HD channel not on sky like it's gospel, when infact it's total rubbish.
What extra revenue does a HD simulcast of a channel generate? There will be an extremely limited increase in viewers of SD + HD compared to SD alone as there's only a tiny amount of people that will point blank refuse to watch SD, so any viewers on HD are simply subtracting from the SD viewing figures. That means the key metric for channel revenue from advertisers which is eyeballs on sets, remains the same, they've just migrated from one channel to another, and are watching the same adverts.
Unless advertisers pay more for HD advertising (and they don't) then withholding an HD version of a channel DOES NOT in any way effect revenue, hence why Sky can do it, because any viewers that would watch the HD channel are just watching the SD one instead and they're still getting their ad revenue from them.
The only additional revenue will be from the carriage fee, which is going to be limited for a HD channel (there's no way they'll get a share of the HD sub) and VM would be far better off using it as a bargaining chip to get Sky HD channels.