[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by TheDon

I wasn't refering to "ma and pa cable companies" but ones with limited geographical range that still compete with the likes of direcTV and dish who have complete coverage, and the cables companies that have a wider coverage, such as comcast and time warner. Cablevision for instance operates in only a couple of states, and yet has huge penetration in those states., it's not what I'd call a big player. But if you're looking for smaller than that, you can see Advanced cable communications or northland cable, both are small providers existing in limited areas that still compete competitively with the big players.

Cablevision is the MSO in the areas where it operates, there is virtually zero overlap between it and any other operator.

It's also, amusingly, involved in content issues.

Also, again, only access is regulated, content has to be offered to all platforms, the pricing is not regulated.

This is exactly my point? They make the same carriage deals that are made in this country for pretty much every other channel than the Sky ones. There's no need for a channel to be part of a platform for it to make content.

Sky just holds their own channels to ransom with inflated prices because it can carry them itself and sees no need for them to be on other platforms (a stance that was shaken with the sky basics debacle)

Then let Sky suffer due to their own shaky stance.

If a platform decides that it's not viable to carry a channel at the asking price then that should be it's choice, it should however have the same access to it as any other platform and be able to make that choice, not have the content provider sit there and go "we don't want you to have it".

Sky have offered to do similar to Setanta / ESPN on other platforms and offer Sky Sports, etc using the VM network themselves. VM refused, an odd move given how loss making it alledgedly is however as we know VM are very protective of their network assets.

I know the US situation isn't perfect (for instance direcTV still has exclusive rights to many channels like the NFL Sunday Ticket) but it's a lot better than it is here where the market leading platform is also the market leading content supplier and so has the rest of the industry over a barrel.

Vertical integration is extremely bad for the consumer, it limits choice and changes the focus of content providers from eyes on screen to subscribers to the platform. There's a fundamental conflict of interest where a content provider should be more interested in eyes on the screen than which platform they're coming from, but when platform and content provider are the same there's a vested interest in limiting those eyes to your own platform.

This is why the tv networks in the states were heavily regulated from the start, it just wouldn't be possible for one of the major players like direcTV to exert any sort of control over ABC, CBS, NBC or FOX, which is essentially the situation that exists here. When news corp bought in to direcTV one of the core requirements of the deal was that they couldn't pull the channels from other platforms, and all platforms had to be treated equally. It could even be said that the tight regulation was what caused news corp to then sell on it's stake in direcTV because they couldn't leverage it in the same way that they've been able to with bskyb over here.

Actually content providers influence carriers there just as here. Note again the Time Warner Cable - Viacom spat.

Separating Sky's production and broadcast isn't necessarily a bad idea but would have to be handled very, very carefully.