Quote:
Originally Posted by clinteastman
We will only ever hear biased reports from these talk as there are no impartial parties involved.
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but with the evidence of nothing new arriving in months and months, if not years now we can make some assumptions on the evidence.
Viacom add Comedy Central HD (simply a HD version of a channel we already had in SD,) but to facilitate this remove two channels we no longer have access to in any form. This instead of taking extra capacity from what we would assume are a very close and important working partner. Meanwhile extra capacity was sought from Astra for the same channel meaning no removal of other services from the Sky platform.
CSC Media add their flagship "true entertaiment" channel. However to facilitate this have to remove their childrens offering from Virgin Media. Meanwhile when any CSC add channels to the sky epg they seek extra capacity from Astra.
CBS via Chello Media make a high profile attempt to join the UK market. They create two extra channels which quickly gain carriage on Astra, but now, two years since the channels were first announced, are no nearer appearing on Virgin Media.
BSkyB buy Virgin medias channel portfolio, part of the agreement is that Virgin will have long term access to Skys channels, and I rather foolishly thought this would also go for any new channel launches within a set time period also, however a matter of weeks later Sky launch a new flagship channel, which didn't, and hasn't since appeared on the VM Platform.
Premier Sports launch a new channel, which gains capacity on Astra with ease, but despite their insistence of continued efforts, get no nearer an agreement with capacity on the VM Platform.
Box Nation launch and seem confident of carriage from the off on both Astra and VM, even putting both platforms on their website... However, while the Astra capacity is not an issue, it all goes quiet on the VM front and all references to it are removed off the website.
Sony, a multinational corporation launch an english language channel in the UK... they, again, have little problem getting access to Astra and the Sky EPG, however despite their immense influence are unable to agree any carriage deal with VM.
PBS maker announcements of their intention to join the UK market with a new channel, which has already agreed carriage on Astra onto the Sky EPG, and are in discussion with VM. It doesn't take a genius to work out that if some of the worlds biggest media organisations can't agree anything for capacity with VM that PBS have very little chance of making it onto a platform that to all intents and purposes has been closed to newcomers for almost two years now. Even the recent addition of the +1 and HD channels was due to VM selling its stake in UKTV whilst inserting a clause for the carriage of the missing channels, and not an independent deal.
The evidence is just so huge it cannot be ignored, the problem has to lie with VM. And the sooner VM recognise this and try to address the problem, there is no chance of any new content being added to VM anytime soon, as I am sure they have very little else to sell in exchange for anything new.
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