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turbulentfurball
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Join Date: Dec 2005
Location: Québec
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2007-02-23, 17:44

Virgin Media, the UK's largest cable TV provider (over 90% of the market), have decided that soon, basic channels provided by Sky, the UK's only satellite provider will no longer be available. Such channels include Sky One, (which premiers The Simpsons, 24, and Lost amongst others), Sky News, Sky Sports News and more will disappear from Virgin's lineup. The reason for this is that Virgin say that Sky have decided to increase their charges to the extent that it would price them out of the pay-tv market. A mud-slinging match has began from both sides:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Virgin
Hello,

Good to see you!

If you've heard some news about your non-premium Sky channels, and you'd like to find out the full story. You've come to the right place.

Read on and we'll tell you more below.

What's happened?
Thanks to Sky, some of their non-premium channels, like Sky One and Sky News may be disappearing from Virgin Media's service soon. Sky Sports and Sky Movies are not affected by this.

How come?
While we've continued to make Virgin Media channels like Living, Bravo and Challenge available to all Sky customers, Sky may withdraw their own non-premium channels from Virgin Media's service – in order to force you into switching service.
Virgin Media were willing to pay an increase in costs in order to get the complete range of Sky content and channels.
However, Sky has consistently demanded an increase that bears no relation to their channels' market value.
We have refused to accept this increase, since it would mean absorbing significant costs ourselves, and passing the kind of price increase on to our customers that is simply unfair. We are not prepared to rip off our customers.
So Sky have picked up their ball and gone home.
Sky have replied with:

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sky
We just wanted to keep you updated, given what NTL/Virgin have been saying today. First things first, as far as we’re concerned, negotiations are continuing, and we hope these will be completed successfully without anyone missing out on their favourite shows.

We want Sky One, Sky Two, Sky Sports News and the award-winning Sky News to remain available to NTL/Virgin customers. We know that they are missing out on other Sky channels like Sky Three and Sky Arts, so we’ve been talking to NTL/Virgin about these as well.

At Sky, we love great TV. We’ve increased the amount we spend on our channels by more than two thirds over the past few years. That’s why we can bring you great shows like the newest episodes of Lost, 24 and The Simpsons, as well as acclaimed original productions like Terry Pratchett’s Hogfather.

So we hope people will see through angry statements from NTL/Virgin and encourage them to come back and agree a fair price for some of the finest shows on TV.
Following the above text, Sky try to encourage Virgin users to switch to Sky.

Some background to Virgin Media:

Previously, there were two main cable TV providers in the UK: NTL and Telewest (nee United Artists for my area). These companies, although competitors, provided their services in different geographical locations, so their competition was not direct. These companies recently merged to become NTL: Telewest. Shortly afterwards, NTL: Telewest merged with Virgin Mobile to create Virgin Media; the UK's only 4-way provider of pay-TV, broadband internet, land-line telephony and mobile telephony. The Virgin Media re-branding is under a month old.

Sky One is one of the most popular pay TV channels in the UK; it's loss would certainly mean a huge loss of business for Virgin. Personally, I don't watch much TV, but most of what I do watch is on Sky One - American imports. The whole thing is really stupid, but it seems to be a big deal. I can't figure out who is right here, but I guess it'll get resolved somehow.
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