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Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
Just found out that Bliss(mas) was abruptly closed down at 10.21am yesterday. This must have been a sudden decision as they had only just rebranded for Christmas and nothing was mentioned on air prior to the closure.
Also, it appears that some of the lesser performing channels are being kicked out of the 'sub club' by Sky as their contracts expire. There is speculation that this is to help to pay for what Sky paid for the football rights.
This has knock on effects for VM customers as some channels on cable may close if they lose the sub money from Sky. Conversely, some channels that are currently encrypted on VM may become FTA elsewhere ;-)
It's interesting how Sky either no longer fear (or have given up the fight over) FTA channels. In the early nineties, Sky succeeded in forcing people who wanted to watch multi channels to have to pay for them because they managed to encrypt most of them- even QVC was behind a paywall!!!
Now, they have put five Sky channels onto Freesat and are slowly dropping financial support/encryption for others. This could be of benefit to VM customers as, hopefully, it will see an end to deals like ITV Encore too.
PBS decided to try and survive with ad revenue only and went FTA recently, which also allowed them to increase their reach by joining Freesat.
In the past, Current TV closed immediately they lost the funding, whereas Motors TV went back to being free again.
It is rumoured that two more music channels* are set to close and that one or more UKTV channels may be going FTA.
*Stars and CSC Dance have been mentioned as possibilities. Do we get these two channels on VM (no access to my box at the moment)?
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Was told last night that rumours are flying around the industry that UKTV are the latest victims of the 'Sub Club' review and are to make some or all of their SD channels FTA and available on Freesat; less likely is that their HD variants will be unencrypted.
As more channels become free elsewhere, VM will have to up their game...