The Sky’s The Limit For The Control Freaks
2 March 2007 tbs.pm/163
BBC News: Consumer body angry at BSkyB row
In the latest stage of the Sky-Virgin debacle, The National Consumer Counci are threatening to put in an official complaint to the government, in an attempt to “knock heads together” (perhaps they’ll need a slam?)
Whatever the wrongs and rights of each side of this debate, one thing is clear – Sky is obviously running scared. Not just of Virgin, but of Freeview too, hence its recent announcement that it would be pulling its channels off Freeview and turning the space into a new subscription service run by themselves – although they’ll have at least a ten week Ofcom consultation period eating into that time, and the results from that are far from clear.
And back on Cable, Sky have been making bold claims about forcing Virgin to allow Sky open access to the cable platform so Sky can sell direct to Virgin customers. The chances of that happening are extremely unlikely, however one thing seems abundantly clear – if Sky can’t control something, they clear no longer want to do it.