July 26, 2011

Sky Movies shake up anticipated

from MediaGuardian:
BSkyB's domination of premium movies on pay-TV is headed for a challenge next month when the Competition Commission is expected to announce that it will take action to weaken the satellite broadcaster's stranglehold on Hollywood films.

BT and Virgin Media have led rival pay-TV and film businesses in pushing for regulators to limit Sky's power on the grounds that it was keeping competitors out of the market. Preliminary findings published over recent weeks on the commission's website have found that Sky has a case to answer. The commission will give its provisional decision in mid-August.

4 comments:

devilincarnate said...

I mentioned this a long time a go when the working papers came out over on Cable Forum? There were a few posts about it but not many? See what can happen?

Nialli said...

My concern would be that the Sky movie monopoly really suits most customers and we could end up with having to sign up to multiple movies suppliers (like they do in the US and it will cost us more. That's what happened with Sky Sports (although VM soften the cost of ESPN for us). Sky Movies is too expensive and there are too many films that are never shown, but the alternatives are Film4 (great but limited by a tight budget) and TCM which is still in 4:3 and low bitrate SD. VM has said that it's not in the expensive content game anymore, so, unless they're thinking Filmflex subs (like they do with Picturebox or whatever it's called) I'm not sure why they are still pursuing this one.

campbellg said...

How about concentrating on the TV monopoly first!!

sibod said...

Love Film could actually have a dent movie library.
NetFlix could actually launch here!
FilmFlex could have more than just PPV content!
We could actually get our movies streamed without having to be Sky subscribers!
SeeSaw, etc might be able to compete!

There are many reasons why Sky's movie stranglehold is a bad thing.