I totally agree that this may not be the best of moves by Virgin, however the act of selling the channels will give Virgin a much needed cash injection and Sky are likely to be highest bidders.
The real problem in my eyes isn't the short term implications but more of the long term. Everyone knows that Sky are out to screw everyone to boost their own sales and whilst this may be beneficial to Sky it will in time put VM in a very difficult position.
The real problem is that Sky have too much power over everything. If Sky was simply a distributer of content like Virgin, BT etc. then everything would be a level playing field - unfortunately Sky own a lot of important channels and use all of this power to their advantage. Whilst I have great admiration for what Sky has accomplished it cannot be fair to the competition if one company has complete control.
I just hope that VM's legal team go through everything with a fine toothed comb
