Quote:
Originally Posted by jem
You know, I do vaguely remember hearing that there was some kind of legal shenanigans going on at the time and technically Telewest (the smaller company) actually bought NTL. Something to do with broadcast rights, although the merged company retained the NTL branding.
Possibly an urban myth.
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It's actually true.
It was due to Telewest (Flextech) owning half of UKTV, with BBC Worldwide owning the other half.
If Telewest was bought by another company the BBC could trigger a "change of control" clause in the UKTV agreement forcing Telewest to sell their share in UKTV.
To prevent that happening, the deal was structured so Telewest acquired NTL.
https://www.digitalspy.com/tech/a252...of-uktv-stake/