[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

The reason I said that is the world seems to pass you by and you don't notice. It's like you are frozen in aspic and powerless to move on.

What you have failed to do is justify your assertion that Sky can stump up for the bigger Premiership rights, but Amazon cannot. And the fact that you always seem to take the view that nothing will happen because it hasn't happened yet. These are hardly well thought out arguments, are they?

You haven’t demonstrated what will change to enable another supplier to enter the market and succeed. Indeed, as I’ve pointed out before, the strategists at Sky correctly predicted a fall in the value of the rights despite the “looming shadow” of Amazon being peddled by the Premier League snake oil salesmen.

The thing is economics, and principles of retailing anything, are largely frozen in time. Streaming is just another mechanism of delivering television - it’s not the revolution you claim it to be and a streamer has to have a viable model just as ITV Digital, Setanta, ESPN and others have tried. Where are the customers?

I have pointed out numerous times that Sky have the customers to be profitable on day 1 of a rights window. Everyone else has to catch up.

By the way, I do think that streaming and on demand viewing are the future, but not just because that appeals to me. I am merely observing the way we are going, and it is strange that you cannot seem to grasp that. Do you really think that when everything goes IPTV that our programmes will still be presented the way they are now, through scheduled channels crammed with advertisements?

I don't think so!

And that’s just it - it’s solely your thoughts. No-one has ever had to sit down and watch adverts since PVRs came out. Yet, the observable reality is they do. You see people as simple, straightforward and inclined to do what you prefer. However consumers aren’t a single homogenous group going to wake up tomorrow and decide to stop watching scheduled television.