January 31, 2017

Discovery channels on Sky

Today’s is the last day for Sky and Discovery to agree a deal on these channels

  • Discovery Channel
  • Eurosport 1
  • Eurosport 2
  • Animal Planet
  • TLC
  • Investigation Discovery
  • DMAX
  • Discovery Turbo
  • Discovery Shed
  • Discovery Science
  • Discovery History
  • Home & Health
  • Quest

and all of their HD and +1 siblings. If there’s no 11th hour agreement today then that’s a lot of blank slots on the Sky EPG tomorrow. As carriage disputes go, it’s a doozy, and possibly a taste of things to come as the channels and platforms start to feel the commercial squeeze of those billions being invested in football.
Will people jump from Sky (and NowTV, which is also affected) because of the (temporary?) absence of a dozen or so documentary channels? I don’t think so. Discovery may be a big name but it’s hardly a big channel with compelling content these days. And that content is so widely available now that I’d be surprised if anyone made it a sole determinant of which provider they go with - I’d suggest availability, price and performance are more important. How many Virgin Media customers have a cheap NowTV box on stand by when Sky Atlantic has something interesting on? I do, and I would guess I’m by no means alone.
But maybe that’s just me. I don’t watch any of the Discovery lineup and if it disappeared from Virgin tonight I wouldn’t even notice. However, I have a friend who enjoys several Discovery shows and for him it’s a deal breaker - he’s had enough of Sky and is planning to try Virgin or BT, so what do I know?

UPDATE
Susanna Dinnage, managing director, Discovery Networks UK, said in a statement: “We want to thank our millions of viewers and fans for their overwhelming support over the last few days. We have reached a new agreement that guarantees Sky’s customers access to Discovery’s wide range of channels and programmes for years to come."
Read more at http://www.whathifi.com/news/sky-agrees-deal-to-keep-discovery-and-eurosport-tv-channels#i8q3bfgvI41RBxhu.99

4 comments:

Unknown said...

I think Sky should do a Deal with Discovery network to Keep Eurosport channels on Sky.
More sport on Sky The Better!!

rowland2008 said...

Started panicking as i am tied to Sky for 8 more months,i love the cycling on Eurosport,brilliant coverage,and Gold Rush,Wheeler Dealers etc,reading Sky Blogs i get the impression lots would jump ship to Virgin and BT,funnily enough the reason i do not have Virgin tv anymore was their inability to do a deal with Sky Atlantic,any way this morning learnt that a deal has been struck so happy days.

rowland2008 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Dan said...

Shame that BT owns eurosport not discovery.