Digital TV Blog

Sports provider teams up with cable co

To no-one's great surprise, Virgin recently pulled back the bed sheets to reveal that it had been cosying up to Setanta over a deal that will see the Size: XL with V+ cable TV platform furnished with completely FREE Setanta Sports content. This means Virgin customers get to see the 46 exclusive Premier League games and SPL Scottish Premiership matches for nothing.

The two companies have also announced plans to develop an entirely new sports news channel to rival Sky Sports News.

BT will also be launching their own sports platform in time for the new season, and a deal with Setanta sees BT Vision customers being able to subscribe to the Setanta Sports Pack for £9.99 a month or £12 for Setanta plus 242 near-live Premier League matches.

Auntie launches on-demand online TV

Today, the BBC s long-awaited on demand platform, the BBC iPlayer was launched. The service, which is free to download, allows users to download programmes broadcast over the last seven days, and watch them up to 30 days later. More clips from the Beeb archives are expected to be made available in the future, potentially allowing users to generate their own TOPT2 playlists.

Critics have been quick to point out that the iPlayer, despite its Apple namesake, is not yet available to Mac users. Support is currently only available to PC users running Windows XP, although the BBC stress that they will eventually make the service available to everyone as per the PSB remit.

You can register for the iPlayer now by following the links on the BBC's main website.

BT football package provokes sniffy responce

BT Broadband subscribers who have signed up for the hybrid IPTV service BT Vision will be able to access a blend of live and near-live Premier League football games when the season kicks off in less than a months time.

BT offer customers game highlights and full coverage of Premiership matches to be screened at 10pm on the same day as games are played, which customers can access by paying a monthly subscription of £4 or for individual pay-per-view charges of £1.99 per game. BT will also show 125 Coca-Cola League and Carling Cup games.

BT Vision customers will also be able to sign up with sports broadcaster Setanta for £12 a month, which provides live coverage of 46 Barclays Premier League fixtures and 60 Scottish Premier League matches.

The party line courtesy of BT Retail's chief executive Ian Livingston appears to contain a rather wicked barb: "This is a great day for sports fans. They can now follow their team for less than a pound a week. Why pay sky-high prices now that there's an alternative?"

Sky, not a company to take this sort of jibing on the chin, hit back with: "Sky Sports will offer near-live coverage of the same 242 matches that BT will offer to its broadband subscribers, but without any extra costs. We're confident that customers are smart enough to find the real value in this competitive marketplace."

With Virgin having lost several TV customers, BT is now Sky's main competitor in the pay-TV market. BT's position in the broadband market means that it can offer its entire range of services to a greater number of customers than Sky currently can. Having said that, Sky are continuing to unroll their broadband network at a furious pace; the satcaster has currently unbundled equipment in over 1,100 BT exchanges, and shows no sign of slowing down.

Courtroom drama fans will remember how BT was part of the Gang of Four (which included Setanta and Virgin) which successfully petitioned Ofcom to have a look at Sky's admittedly whiffy purchase of the ITV stake last year.

You'll never watch alone

Liverpool Football Club have signed an exclusive deal with sports broadcasters Setanta, which will see their own dedicated TV channel, LFC TV, kick off on British screens in September this year.

This means that Reds fans will be able to watch LFC TV on Freeview, provided that they have a subscription to Setanta, which will also allow them to watch some of the top sporting action on Setanta Sports 1, which will include including Liverpool Champions League and Premier League games. LFC TV will also be available on Sky and Virgin Media as part of the Setanta Sports Pack, and hopefully, come August, BT Vision.

Setanta also currently broadcast the offical TV channels for the SPL teams Rangers and Celtic, as well as broadcasting live SPL football, live Premiership and FA Cup matches.

Satcaster responds, submits papers to the High Court

In the courtroom, Sky have formally rejected claims by Virgin Media that it abused its dominant position by lowering the prices it paid for the cable group's channels and raising the price for its own.

In papers submitted to the High Court, Sky state that the breakdown in negotiations that resulted in the withdrawal of channels from Virgin's platform was "not the result of any market failure or breach of competition law... rather it was a product of Virgin Media's commercial conduct and decisions".

Sky had drastically reduced the price it was willing to pay for rights to broadcast Virgin-owned channels such as Bravo, LivingTV, Trouble and Challenge channels from £33.4m to £6.7m. Sky said that it "did not consider any of the Bravo, Challenge or Trouble channels [to be] effective tools for the acquisition or retention of subscribers", which is a nice way of saying that Bravo et al – home of Digital TV favourites such as Booze Britain and Dog the Bounty Hunter – are crap.

Sky also insisted on a 13% price increase for its own channels, which took the total cost of carriage fees to around £40m. Virgin were unwilling to pay more than £30m, but Sky, in what they say was an attempt to compromise, lowered their initial offer to a 6% increase, at £35.7m – Sky are saying that Virgin refused to meet them halfway by refusing this offer or making one of their own.

In light of the recent announcements concerning the possibility of a takeover of Virgin by a number of private equity groups, Sky said: "If there is a change of ownership at Virgin Media, we hope that any new management would take a more rational approach."

It has been rumoured that any possible buyout, whilst seeing Sir Richard Branson retaining his share in the group, would see the cable company undergo yet another rebrand, which, given the first quarter performance of Virgin Media may help restore public confidence in the quad play provider.

Meanwhile, Sky have taken a pasting from the BBC and Channel 4 as well as Virgin who have all lined up to condemn the controlling 17.9% Sky stake in ITV. The Beeb said that the purchase represented a "great [ ] public interest concern remains with regard to plurality of voice in the provision of news," with C4 reinforcing this view with:

"The bringing under common control two of the three material television news suppliers is not in the public interest since it will result in an unacceptable reduction of plurality of persons with control of UK media enterprises."

News International, which owns Sky, also owns and runs UK newspapers The Times and The Sun, as well as Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox, Myspace, and the Fox TV network in the US.

debate on the future of Freeview goes a bit year 7

Martin Le Jeune, public affairs head honcho for Sky, has been criticised this week for calling the HD for All campaign a "genuinely silly […] shabby alliance between a group of public service broadcasters who should know better [and] vendors who sell expensive product."

The comments were made in front of a panel for ministers, broadcasters, regulators and manufacturers who convened at Westminster yesterday to discuss the future of the bandwidth which will become available after the full shutdown of the old signal.

The HD for All group have been lobbying Ofcom to make sure that a certain percentage of broadcasting bandwidth earmarked for HD is set aside for terrestrial TV channels before the rest is auctioned off to the highest bidder. Sky, who were the first to introduce HD to UK viewers, naturally don't want technology they've invested heavily in to be so readily available on a terrestrial platform – a profound dislike of the PSB system runs through the Sky hierarchy like red letters through a stick of Brighton rock.

Ofcom currently have no plans to open up bids for the entire HD spectrum and end years of close relationship with the PSB broadcasters and the government, but they have also not said that it isn't on the cards. With the switchover not due to be completed until 2012, it's still early days to speculate on what the official decision will be.

Cable company set for yet another takeover

Virgin Media hit the headlines again this week, amid speculation that the cable network, already fresh from one merger, was considering a takeover from a private equity group.

Virgin have confirmed it has received a takeover approach from an anonymous buyer and that it is considering a potential sale, but have kept schtum as to who the buyer is, although it has been suggested that private equity group Carlyle are the mystery potential investors. A takeover by Carlyle would also make sense, as the group also owns the US cable network Insight, and so could help to patch up some of the technical problems which have plagued the NTL side of the network.

The group have reportedly made an offer of more than £5.5 billion for Virgin Media, who are said to be enthusiastic about the idea of a takeover, which would enable them to patch up their current net loss, and hire more staff for the customer service department of their broadband arm of quad play services.

The takeover would, hopefully, see Virgin have an increased spending for the up and coming Virgin 1 channel, the budget for which is currently dwarfed by that of Sky One, although sceptics have said that the deal may simply result in a golden handshake for a few, and any benefits of a takeover would not filter down to the consumer base.

Virgin Media might not want to go through with a deal before the multiple court proceedings concerning them and Sky have been finished, as after receiving a fresh injection of cash, Sky could argue that Virgin could then afford their carriage fees and the case could fall through.