Originally Posted by JustaBloke

It's not. There is no restraint of trade here. Sky hasn't bought up all the TV channels, there are hundreds available elsewhere. On VM, Freeview, BT, Talk Talk et al.

If (say) Shell decided to close it's UK forecourts and sell its petrol exclusively at Tesco, there'd be sadness at any redundancies but the arrangement would go ahead without question.

That's all Sky are doing. They're not denying us all TV, they're simply denying us a flavour (for want of a better word) of it to encourage us to use their platform rather than VMs.