Sky snaps up Virgin TV channels
You TV, me Telco
Virgin Media is selling its TV channels to Sky, to focus on the telecoms side of its business.
Sky is paying £160 million cash for the channels and will no longer pay carriage fees for Virgin channels to appear on its TV services.
The company has also secured a new agreement with Virgin that safeguards the appearance of Sky’s basic channel line-up on Virgin’s Cable V service. Sky’s HD channels may also appear on Virgin Cable, for an “incremental wholesale fee”. And Virgin will tout Sky content on its on-demand TV service.
The deal is more or less in the bag – it needs a thumbs up from Irish regulators to complete.
COMMENTS
Sauce for the goose
I think the BBC should put in a complaint to Ofcom.
Pretty low
as the Tories love Murdoch and would probably get a lot of money not to let this happen.... or am I being too cynical?
"Sky is paying £160 million cash"
Blimey. That's gotta be quite a few suitcases full. Hope they both use the same bank, otherwise Virgin'll need a van or something to haul it over to their own bank and deposit it. Don't forget the lodgement book, lads!
Haven't these people heard of BACS?
Carrier and Content
So Virgin Media become nothing more than another delivery mechanism for Murdoch. What are the chances that OFCOM might investigate or break up this virtual monopoly?
Ah, competition
Good thing the private sector provides such wonderful alternatives to paying the license fee.
