Originally Posted by jj20x

There's nothing to stop VM making temporary enhanced offers to help fund the new HD channels, it doesn't mean they would be owning channels. In fact, maybe they could have used some of the cash they received from their own channels to help bring new ones to the platform. VM had an exclusive carriage agreement for Film 4 HD for quite some time, so it wouldn't even be a major change of policy.

In any event, there's not that many channels left where funding an additional HD version would be a big crowd puller, so that ship has probably sailed.

That doesn't stop VM negotiating to carry new channels from the start. If they wait until the entire contract is due for renewal, Sky will have already negotiated a contract. As there was no demand for the channel from VM, Sky gets to negotiate exclusive carriage and then the channel remains unavailable to VM at contract renewal time.