[m419]

This is how Sky are trying to force out other rivals and to force people onto Sky:

Selling Sky Movies and Sky Sports at very high costs to rivals to the point where rivals can never beat or even match the price Sky charges its residential customers.

Undercutting services even though rivals pay a very high price such as restricting features such as Red Button and interactive services as well as holding back HD that should be coming with the Sky premium channels together.

Deliberately offering a less high performing picture quality to rivals customers. However,I've noticed it happens occasionally,maybe so that they don't get caught out.

Sky control the following channels:

Sky 1
Sky 2
Sky 3
Sky Sports 1
Sky Sports 2
Sky Sports 3
Sky Sports 4
Sky Sports News
Sky News
Sky News HD
Sky Real Lives 1
Sky Real Lives 2
Sky Real Lives HD
Sky 1 HD
Sky Sports HD channels
Sky Movies Premiere
Sky Movies Premier+1
Sky Movies Showcase
Sky Movies Drama
Sky Movies Family
Sky Movies Horror&Sci-Fi
Sky Movies Comedy
Sky Movies Classics
Sky Movies Screen 1
Sky Movies Screen 2
Sky Movie HD channels
Sky Travel
Sky Vegas

Sky then has like 50% ownership over:

National Geographic
National Geographic+1
National Geographic HD
History
History HD
Crime and Investigation Network

Then there is the parent company owned channels:

Fox News
FX
FX HD
The Weather Channel (Thats if it ever returns to the UK,Absent since 1995)

They also control 50% of Men and Motors,however this channel is being ceased on 1st April 2010.

Other interests:

Five News and certain content is provided by BskyB
A share in ITV soon to be sold off is owned by BskyB
Most Sky exclusive channels are locked to Sky under contract
Sky control Disney Channels

So you see they control too much of the pay-tv and Digital TV market.

Sky were even after launching a similar service to top-up-tv that would offer dribbles of Sky1,Sky Real Lives,Disney Channel and National Geographic. This was blocked by Ofcom.

So when Sky get worried about churning or when they see Virgin Media becoming a threat, Sky start throwing there weight about and wack up wholesale prices to the point where rivals find it non-commercially viable and thus rivals will either cease carrying the channels or else cut features which customers do not want and this is Sky's attempt to win back customers.

Sky's content Rivals:

BBC:

BBC1,BBC2,BBC3,BBC4,BBC Parliament,BBC News 24,BBCHD,CBBC and Cbeebies

Virgin Media Television:

Living,Livingit,Living+1,Livingit+1,LivingHD,Bravo ,Bravo+1,Bravo2,Challenge TV,Challenge Jackpot,Virgin1 and Virgin1+1 also brand ownership of discontinued channels such as Trouble and TinyLiving

UKTV Channels(A 50/50 joint venture company between BBC and Virgin Media Television):

Watch
Watch+1
G.O.L.D
G.O.L.D+1
Dave
Davejavu
Dave+1
Alibi
Alibi+1
Eden
Blighty
Home
Home+1
Really
Really+1

Channel 4 Television:

Channel 4
Channel 4+1
Channel 4HD
Film 4
Film 4+1
More4
E4
E4+1
E4 HD (Coming soon)
4 Music

CBS and Viacom:

Comedy Central
Comedy Central+1
Comedy Central Extra
CBS Reality
CBS Horror
CBS Thriller
All MTV channels inlcuding Viva,VH1 and MTVHD
Nickelodeon

Other content rivals do not get a chance at offering HD really, so yeah it is time someone intervened.