Don't be scared of Sky?

[Derek]

Very interesting article over at El Reg on Sky

Linky

Originally Posted by The Register

The industry rumours are that Ofcom is going to give Sky a pretty good kicking this year, as it has presumably become bored with slapping BT around.
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UK Online was infamously late to market with DSL, has been dogged with provisioning problems and has a very high cash burn rate (e.g. national advertising campaigns etc), all with very few subscribers to show for it in comparison to rivals. Easynetââ‚à ‚¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s network as a whole is poorly managed and not ready for video services †“ in fact, most analysts are deeply sceptical that the money Sky intends to invest in expanding its LLU operations will actually be even remotely enough to get the job done.
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And that vulnerability is beginning to show. Churn (cancellation) levels are higher than ever, and the cynical majority in the industry reportedly believe the new portfolio of services is a cunning ruse to improve its subscriber statistics as it seems to have reached a difficult commercial plateau in customer acquisition.

It does seem to be written by someone with a dislike of Sky and Rupert Murdoch but does seem to make some pretty interesting points.

[quadplay]

Yes, I saw that. Some very interesting points raised.

[scrotnig]

The big problem for all pay tv providers is Freeview. I don't have it myself but I have set it up for a few people using dirt cheap boxes from Tesco, and even at this level the quality is brilliant, the boxes have more functionality than my ntl boxes. The range of channels, especially since the addition of E4, is more than enough for all but die hard sports and movie fans, and it is this that is hurting the pay companies...they are now charging a fortune for mostly the same channels you can get for nothing.

[RealDiamond]

Well all the points raised in that artical dont apply to me the programmes i watch uncut are not on the freeview channels, The sports i watch are not available on freeview live. you cant compress 180 hours of sport action per week into 1 half an hour on the bbc and have the programme change time slot every week. The 6 hours sky give it isnt enought.
MOVIES are not the same when channels put the news in half way though. The snipers just fired at the president, the bullets flying to the glass. agh god dam it. and heres the news, youve got news 24 hours a day on sky news or the BBC 24 news or CNN.
yes the Movies channels may be mutli repeats but thats because some of us can only watch one channel at a time. and usaly there are 3 things on at the same time i like.
SKY one /sci-fi/one of the movie Channels + sky has done away with the 9pm watershed on two movie channels now 5pm AT LONG LAST but it now clashes with sky one, i cant win,
yes its done so you have to upgrade to a sky+box, but as i long time veiwer from the analoge days i dont get any discount, that is realy the silly bit.

[Gareth]

Wow, the author of that (too lengthy, imo) article sounds rather bitter and twisted. Anyone else think that he maybe a disgruntled ex-employee or at least be in some other way once connected to Sky, to have such a large grudge against them?

---------- Post added at 22:32 ---------- Previous post was at 22:31 ----------

...saying that, he does raise a couple of valid points.

[Stuart]

The problem that sky (and all the pay tv channels) have is that there are a finite amount of people willing to pay for TV. I read an article a few months ago that suggested that if you combine the total number of viewers for each pay TV company, they are getting near that figure.

For a lot of people, Freeview is more than adequate for what they want.