Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
I'm pleased for you as an individual, but all these discounts to appease and retain customers will have exceeded what VM hoped to save from the UKTV carriage deal.
This is even without factoring in the downgrades, cancellation of up to three services, extra staff costs etc etc.
The longer this goes on, the more that VM will be digging themselves deeper into a hole, making it harder and harder to get out of before becoming impossible.
If they give in and make an agreement with UKTV as they have with ITV, the other channel operators will see VM as an easier target to obtain increased carriage fees, but I don't think that they have any other option now as the damage of doing otherwise is far greater.
Damage limitation is now they best chance they have.
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On the one hand, you are saying VM are 'digging themselves deeper into a hole' and you criticise them for not doing a deal, and then you imply that they can't give in because they will be seen as an easy target by other operators. Sounds to me like a cake and eat it argument.
The point is, UKTV were charging too much for the content they were offering and it appears that they were not providing the amount of on demand content that they were contractually obliged to make available.
Virgin clearly believe that they are not getting value for money, and will not agree to UKTV's terms. UKTV will lose a lot of money as a result of this intransigence and therefore, sooner or later, they will reconsider their position.
The fact the a deal was done with ITV I think shows other operators that VM will not be pushed around, and that is a good thing. However, I think that VM need to rethink their position regarding content. If they continue only to take content from other providers, they put themselves in a more vulnerable position commercially.
Although you paint this picture of disaster with the UKTV channels being dropped, it is not. They survived the Sky channels going off air some years back, and frankly, that was a bigger deal because at that time, the attraction of having pay tv was that you got the Sky channels.
Clearly, those who watched UKTV channels for much of their TV time will be disappointed or outraged by having the channels removed, most will not be too concerned by this. Yes, there will be some cancellations, but let's not get ahead of ourselves by intimating that VM will take a big financial hit by this. They were paying a lot of money to carry UKTV channels.