There's a report on The Guardian that Sky is wrapping up the deal for the Virgin TV channels (Living, Bravo, Virgin1, etc). Full details in Sky closes in on deal to buy Virgin Media TV channels
Interesting. There goes any bartering power Virgin will have at future carriage negotiations - I hope they get a longer commitment for us to have the Sky channels on cable out of any deal. And Sky Movies and Sports as an HD option would be pretty darn good too, especially as OFCOM's report on pay TV is likely to demand it too.
ITV1 HD continues to be rumoured to be the third new HD channel on its way. Discussion over in this Cable Forum thread: note the guy from Virgin who says "nothing announced...yet". The tease...
2 comments:
I agree with your sentiment, re: bargaining power.
Because it's ludicrious, on that basis, to give these up, I can only surmise one of four things
1) SO deperate for money, they are just needing cash
2) They have given up trying to get sky sports/movies in HD
3) They beleive, Tories or not, that the Ofcom ruling will allow them to get sports/movies in HD
4) Or, and whilst perhaps the least favourable of the 4, not totally infeasible that they've already done a deal for those channels, or at least some of them, and the Virgin/Living channels are just the sweeteners?
Be interesting to see how this plays out.
How will the powers that be allow Sky to extend their monopoly like this? Surely they should be stopping this. And what's in it for Virgin? A short term cash injection... and....?
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