Quote:
Originally Posted by LexDiamond
I have never understood why people use the word 'monopoly' when describing Sky.
Virgin actually have significant power over Sky in that Sky can't realistically run any of its own channels (in SD) without making it available to Virgin. The Sky 1 saga proved this.
What it can do is make a bit of fuss for a while which it certainly does. But that is just open markets and Virgin seem like a company not willing to pay over the odds so timing differences will always occur.
I personally find the idea of splitting Sky very strange. If you reduce the incentive for them to gain an advantage then all viewers including Virgin viewers would lose out.
Correct me if I am wrong but didn't the sale of Virgin channels to Sky include freeview channels (sorry I'm not familiar with freeview)? If so that is very convenient as Sky pay Virgin to buy channels then only to remove from freeview and both win. Sky also removed SSN from freeview trying to devalue BT Vision and Freeview.
Personally I think Virgin and Sky are like Marie and Frank from Everybody loves Raymond. They come across as hostile but they love each other as they both make money from each other.
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I haven't ever heard anyone say that Sky is a monopoly. The fear is that they will eventually become a monopoly. Sky has so much money that if they decide to squeeze other platforms by denying them content then there is nothing to stop them. At least when VM owned some channels they had some leverage over Sky. Now they have nothing. VM used the sale of the channels to gain some of Sky's exclusive channels to give them a fighting chance to compete against them. Look what has happened. Sky has bought loads of content that they could have put on their existing channels and put it on a new exclusive channel. How any customer would say that is not a bad thing is beyond me. The different platforms should be competing on price and level of service not channel exclusivity.
If Sky were split up they would still have the incentive to make money that any company has. It's not going to happen though. What we need is for Ofcom to take a stand on this blatant anti-competitive and anti consumer behaviour but Murdoch has too much political influence for that to happen.