New interview with VM CEO

Originally Posted by Mick

This is purely semantics here - the fact is, wording is key and saying "We have all the Sky channels", in one sentence, should be a strong indication to anyone reading this, that this means every channel, Sky has.

His later sentence, telling what actual channels form part of the deal, just adds ambiguity to the average reader. They are going to read his first sentence, come to his second and think, hold on, he just said above, we have all the Sky channels.

If he had said "We have nearly all the Sky channels", we wouldn't be having this discussion.

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Do not post questions like this in any thread - If you want to ask a team member something - contact them via PM.

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Come on Sirius, you cannot be serious with that, Sky vs ntl/vm wars have been going on since nthw.com days.

Agree, however when you listen to someone talk do you listen to the whole conversation or just selected sentences. He corrected himself in the very next sentence so no big deal really unless people want to make it a big deal.

In the link I posted, he talks about a number of subjects that I thought would be interesing to Virgin Media customers, that was the point of the post, not to cause world war 3 with you know who, who of course decided to focus on one sentence to spin an angle.

Its getting boring and tedious now.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Mick

Come on Sirius, you cannot be serious with that, Sky vs ntl/vm wars have been going on since nthw.com days.

This thread was about another Tom Mockbridge interview and it was brought up that VM don't have all the Sky channels as he claimed in the interview. It's not a Sky vs VM thread at all.

There was another thread recently which was a Dailymail interview (since when did CEO's of huge companies do big interviews with them?) posted under the guise of financial information even though there was one sentence about that and the rest was slagging off a competitor. So I think there is good reason to question the reason for Tom doing this interviews. ThisIsMoney is connected to the DailyMail so I wonder what the deal is. Possibly an advertising deal in the works?

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Originally Posted by Top banana

Its getting boring and tedious now.

So what's your excuse for searching out my posts and replying in sections you never posted in before, just to insult me? Luckily Mick can see that kind of stuff even if you delete it

I agree, stop making it personal.

Originally Posted by Qtx

This thread was about another Tom Mockbridge interview and it was brought up that VM don't have all the Sky channels as he claimed in the interview. It's not a Sky vs VM thread at all.

There was another thread recently which was a Dailymail interview (since when did CEO's of huge companies do big interviews with them?) posted under the guise of financial information even though there was one sentence about that and the rest was slagging off a competitor. So I think there is good reason to question the reason for Tom doing this interviews. ThisIsMoney is connected to the DailyMail so I wonder what the deal is. Possibly an advertising deal in the works?

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So what's your excuse for searching out my posts and replying in sections you never posted in before, just to insult me? Luckily Mick can see that kind of stuff even if you delete it

I agree, stop making it personal.

You mean the one thread on the 17th of June where at 16.37 i posted a link to the fact that Virgin Media are working on Superhub AC.

Don't flatter yourself mate - the FACT is that in the VM news topic, you have jumped in on news stories with your take on what has been said, trying to make out that VM and their CEO are up to no good or lying.

VM have indeed been guillty of spinning a yarn as have BT and Sky in their adverts but that does not mean their CEO (who wasn't the CEO 12 months ago) is telling lies.

As I said, I post stories that I think will be interesting to VM customers in the VM news section. If you don't like what I post either put me on ignore or write to the original author of the story rather than spoiling threads in the way that you do.

As per the old saying - "don't shoot the messenger"

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Qtx

Or intentionally misleading like VM has a reputation for. He is obviously aware VM do not have all the Sky channels but yet he is claiming they do in the article. Naughty.

Originally Posted by Mick

This is purely semantics here - the fact is, wording is key and saying "We have all the Sky channels", in one sentence, should be a strong indication to anyone reading this, that this means every channel, Sky has.

His later sentence, telling what actual channels form part of the deal, just adds ambiguity to the average reader. They are going to read his first sentence, come to his second and think, hold on, he just said above, we have all the Sky channels.

If he had said "We have nearly all the Sky channels", we wouldn't be having this discussion.[COLOR="Silver"]

I tend to agree that yet again coming from a UK cable boss there is at least some form of misdirection here.

We have all Sky channels, then a "clarification" in the next sentence...

Liberty are creating one European operation, yet are still saying things will be seperate on the brand side. Perhaps they will be, but if they integrate all other operations, why keep different names?

Yet again we have a UK cable boss talking up the "power" of its broadband network and plays down the content side. "Sky do the creativity." Give me strength.

Does he, Neil Berkett before him, and many of their predecessors think everyone is stupid? Pay tv is driven by premium content which drives new subscriptions.

You can have as fat a pipe as you like, but if you don't have anything to put down it, its pointless. And if you don't own some of that content, its expensive too.

John Malone, owner of VM, now controls a slew of British programmes and possibly the future UK Game of Thrones, if its ever made via the all3media deal. Malone may also control Formula One (premiership football would've been better, but its a start) and no doubt he will stuff Eurosport and Discovery (channels he owns/controls) with more stuff that he owns in the future.

Enough of the lectures that content isn't important. If its not important Mr Mockbridge, why has your boss just spent millions of dollars on buying your own content then?

By the way, unless I'm getting my horizontals and verticals confused, it's not called horizontal consolidation, but vertical integration. But again, perhaps that's another slight of hand for the dim witted journalist that interviewed him.

If Mockbridge really believes that having the Big Kahuna pack in VM's armoury is the same as a huge vertically integrated company like Disney or Time Warner, he really is deluded. No wonder Murdoch had him shipped off to run Sky Italia, he could do less damage there. Perhaps he's missing the sun?

[1andrew1]

I agree with some of your points but think you have got the wrong end of the stick on others.

Originally Posted by Horizon

We have all Sky channels, then a "clarification" in the next sentence...

He obviously should have said we have all the Sky premium channels. I think the paper should have corrected this by putting premium in the sentence in square brackets to show he did not say it. I guess we don't know where the blame lies on this - if VM were asked to sign off on the quotes then they are to blame, if they did not then the Daily Mail is to blame. (So neither agree nor disagree with you on this point.)

Originally Posted by Horizon

Liberty are creating one European operation, yet are still saying things will be seperate on the brand side. Perhaps they will be, but if they integrate all other operations, why keep different names?

Tom Mockridge explains why in the article. The relevant quote is

This is Money 'It doesn’t do enough to change from existing brands,’ he says. ‘In Germany we have Unity and KBW reflecting the history of those systems. Having some sort of central brand trying to tell someone in Romania and someone in Birmingham and someone in Cork, to get the same message, we don’t think that works.'

Originally Posted by Horizon

By the way, unless I'm getting my horizontals and verticals confused, it's not called horizontal consolidation, but vertical integration. But again, perhaps that's another slight of hand for the dim witted journalist that interviewed him.

The horizontal consolidation refers to the consolidation of European cable firms by Liberty Global. However, I'm sure many people will have read the article in the same way that you have as it follows on from the sentences about All3Media and not the European cable companies! If you read it again comparing US cable companies and their scale v the situation in Europe it makes sense.

This is Money When Malone bought Virgin, the ambitions for joining up the dots in Europe were left unclear. Mockridge makes no secret of where Liberty, with its deep pockets, is heading. ‘How do we get the horizontal consolidation that our American colleagues have by default, because they are a single country with 300 million people?’

Originally Posted by Horizon

If Mockbridge really believes that having the Big Kahuna pack in VM's armoury is the same as a huge vertically integrated company like Disney or Time Warner, he really is deluded. No wonder Murdoch had him shipped off to run Sky Italia, he could do less damage there. Perhaps he's missing the sun?

If you re-read the poorly-edited article you will see that:
- The integration talked about is horizontal integration in Europe not vertical integration with content.
- The quote about Big Kahuna being the solution to European integration is not Tom Mockridge's but the journalist's. He acknowledges that Tom Mockridge's question about getting scale is a rhetorical one.
- Your concluding assumptions about Mockridge don't match the facts. He was well respected, Sky Italia was a tough assignment due to the political situation in the country but he navigated it very well. He was also brought back to the UK to trouble shoot News International in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal.