Digital TV Blog

BT give live footy away for free

BT is offering customers free access to Setanta Sports 1 when they sign up for one of its BT Vision packages, in an attempt to win back ground from its competitors in the battle for the broadband market.

Customers will be given Setanta free when they take out a BT Vision bronze, silver or gold package starting at £14 a month – half the cost of Sky’s equivalent. Each package includes the Freeview channels, a digital video recorder and TV Replay, and customers can opt into a number of viewing packs, depending on which package they chooser. These include Kids, Music, Standard Sport and Picture Box, BT Vision’s movie service.

With the addition of Setanta Sports 1, customers can tune into 46 live Barclays Premier League matches, as well as live action from the Scottish Premier League and every round of the FA Cup. Football fans will also have access to ‘near-live’ footage of 242 Premier League matches. The world’s major sporting tournaments will also be broadcast, including the home nations World Cup qualifiers, live US PGA Tour Golf and World Championship Boxing.

Scottish football fans are also in for a treat, as BT Vision announced yesterday that it had signed a deal with Setanta to show 28 on-demand games in addition to the 60 live matches already available to subscribers.

Analysts say that customers are more wary of signing up to pay-TV subscription packages in the light of the current credit crunch. In a press release, BT Vision said “we offer customers the chance to save money by giving them the choice of when they pay and what they pay for.”

In a challenge to rivals Sky and Virgin Media, BT Vision’s Chief Executive Dan Marks said “Our compelling offer… proves you don’t have to pay sky-high prices to watch top-flight football, and our packages offer so much more value than [rival] TV packages on Sky or Virgin… We now have more to watch than any other on-demand TV service in the country”.

Well, sort of.

This just in from the guys at Setanta Sports - the following pre-season friendlies and qualifiers have been announced, including the dates for the Vodacom Challenge mini-tournament games between title holders Orlando Pirates, Kaizer Cheifs and Manchester United. Please note that one of the dates is tob be confirmed, and that all fixtures are, naturally, subject to change.

Sat 12/7 Tranmere v Liverpool 15:00 LFC TV

Thu 17/7 EB / Streymur v Man City (Faroe Islands) UEFA Cup 19:00 Setanta Sports 1

Fri 18/7 Southampton v Celtic 19:45 Celtic TV

Sat 19/7 Kaizer Chiefs v Man United 14:30 Setanta Sports 1

Sat 19/7 Barnet v Arsenal 15:00 Arsenal TV

…

(more…)

Picnic basket shut until next year

Sky’s Picnic pay-TV service on Freeview will be launched until this time next year, if at all, after Ofcom announced that the ongoing inquiry into whether the service will be damaging to competition within the digital TV market.

Sky wants to replace its Sky Three channel on Freeview with a range of other entertainment, news and sports channels, allowing DTT customers to get access to selection of Sky’s premier content, presumably, Sky One, Sky News and some of the Sky Sports channels.

Ofcom has now said that is has to consider the bigger picture with regard to the Picnic proposals and how it will affect the pay-TV market as a whole, and not just Freeview customers. Factors influencing this will be the result of the Sky and Virgin Missing Channels saga, and a separate investigation launched concerning Sky’s dominant position in the marketplace.

The regulator said that: “Ofcom [has] recognised that there are issues raised by the Sky proposal that will inform the [wider] market investigation and vice versa.”

Sky proposed Picnic over a year ago - this further delay will be very frustrating for the satcaster, who see the provision of their sports content on Freeview as not being any different to Setanta selling their Setanta Sports pack to terrestrial viewers.

Mike Darcey, Sky’s chief operating officer, said: “Ofcom has already recognised that Picnic would deliver increased choice, and it is disappointing that customers will be denied these benefits by an extended regulatory process. More than a year has passed since our initial application, with no definitive conclusion in sight.”

The Players Championship at Sawgrass has teed off on Setanta Sports, with Sergio Garcia currently leading the way, with a total of -6, two points above joint second placers Kenny Perry and Paul Goydos, with defending champion Phil ‘Lefty’ Mickelson currently languishing somewhere outside the top ten; it seems as though the TPC jinx is in effect, for the time being at least.

The tournament, unofficially considered to be the ‘Fifth Major’ still draws a huge amount of attention, probably due to the infamous nature of the Stadium Course at Sawgrass - an epic, undulating monstrosity at the centre of which is the dreaded 17^th hole, the Island Green - a tiny hole set on a peninsula which juts out into an circular lake in which hundreds of balls get lost every year.

The Island Green is considered by pgatour.com to be ‘Golf’s most intimidating hole’ and in the US, sports channel ESPN dedicates an entire channel to coverage from the hole during the Players Championship - it is here, across 78 feet of fairway surrounded by water and punctuated by a strategically placed sand trap where PGA world leaders are humbled.

It’s still not too late to get in on the action; for more information on singing up for the Setanta Sports pack, click here.

Repent ye Sinners!

Tomorrow night, well, technically Sunday Morning, Las Vegas will be rocked by the deafening sound of Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins meeting in the ring. Extensive media coverage has been rolling on the two, affording boxing fans a glimpse on the backgrounds and psyches of the two fighters.

BBC Inside Sport has been rolling with a 15 minute short film on Hopkins, detailing his time spent inside the Greaterford institution when he was just a teenager, and how boxing gave him the discipline he needed to reform.

“It’s no big secret. Joe is fighting Bernard Hopkins because everybody else either got beat, or beaten by me.” Perhaps mindful of the fact that the fight over here is being advertised as ‘Judgement Day’ (the bout is being touted as both ‘Battle of the Planet’ in the US) Hopkins talks to Inside Sport with an air of destiny, as if “everything has a full circle to it…

“I believe that all this was scripted. From my childhood days of ignorance to my adolescence in the penitentiary - Joe hasn’t fought anybody in any of his fights with my quality or my credibly of what I’ve done in my career. My record shows that I can talk the talk, and I have walked the walk, for many years.”

Hopkins has also been quick to stir up the patriotic feelings of his audience by pinning the Stars and Stripes to his shorts: “When I step into that ring I represent myself and my family, but I also represent the USA. I believe we have the best athletes in boxing and if I have to prove that then I will do so.”

He is conscious of Joe’s ‘Britishness’ (he is, of course, half Italian) and the fact that his opponent has not once fought outside Europe, and even then has fought most of his matches in either Wales or England. But the US, who has hardly heard of him will not know this; Hopkins has done his best to rouse all feelings of a British Invasion, the first wave of which was seen off by Pretty Boy Floyd Mayweather who dealt Ricky Hatton his first ever defeat: “We have to put a stop to your invasion. You want to put us under the Queen’s regime - I’m the black Paul Revere saying, ‘the British are coming again’.”

“The Brits are here, that’s it,” the Executioner told Setanta Sports. “You’ve got the Brits here and I’ve never beat up on a Brit before. Now I get to kick someone else’s ass from across the pond; it’s great, it’s great motivation!”

Joe Calzaghe has consistently weathered all the brow beating, only really responding to Hopkins’ taunts indirectly, painting a picture of a man who would just rather get on with it and let his fists do the talking. He has said of Hopkins that he “is king of talk,” and that “they should give him his own TV show.

“Hopkins, he’s the way he is. He’s going to get in your face and try to intimidate you,” Calzaghe said after the momentous weigh-in at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas for the Mayweather-Hatton fight. It was here that Hopkins infamously uttered his ‘I’d never lose to a white boy’ line.

“I said what I said,” explained the Executioner. “People who know me, know me. You can write what you want and you have the legal right to do that. It’s up to Joe Calzaghe to prove me a liar.”

Joe’s father and trainer Enzo Calzaghe has been less charitable. “I know for a fact, he [Hopkins] is a dirty little git,” he told Inside Sport. He said that Hopkins “would rather be disqualified than lose to a true champion like Joe.”

The Italian Dragon is more than aware of the pressure that’s on him - he stands to lose his unbeaten record over a fight which he has had to move up a weight to enter, which Hopkins has announced will be his last. He knows that his opponent is going to go all out to bring him down.

“I’m going to be a legend after this fight,” says Calzaghe. “I’m going there and I’m going to win. Quite simply, you are going to see an awesome performance. This is the night ‘The Executioner’ gets executed.”

Judgement Day will be broadcast live and exclusive on Setanta Sports on Saturday April the 19^th, with the ring off currently slated to start at 3am.

New Media IPTV recruits former Auntie adviser

As mobile and broadband providers O2 and Orange prepare to launch digital TV platforms in the UK. BT has appointed Simon Milner, former BBC policy adviser, as its head of media and convergence policy as it makes plans to moves further into the digital media market, hoping to shake off the perception of some, that IPTV is something of an attendant white elephant broadband add-on.

Milner said: “Convergence [in the telecoms market] has been a hot debating topic for at least a decade. For BT and our customers, it’s now a reality and it’s generating policy conundrums which need tackling.”

In the last five years alone we’ve seen mobile phone companies merge with internet service providers, and TV companies setting up their own fixed line networks – BT Vision was launched just over a year ago, and has been busy in snapping up content for the service, most notably near-live coverage of Premiership football games, which when combined with the Setanta Sports Pack, made for an alternative to Sky.

Last year, BT inked a deal with Channel 4 which allowed customers to watch content downloaded on the 4oD platform on their TV screens via the BT Vision box. BT also made noises about New Media 2, a new concept for 21^st Century TV which would see viewers actively participating in the plot outcomes of drama series, allowing for multiple endings to programmes via a library of additional content downloaded from an online backend of additional material.

BT Vision currently has a consumer base of nearly 200,000.

We also find out what bears get up to in the woods

In news which will come as a shock to absolutely no-one, Secretary of State for Business John Hutton has ordered Sky to reduce their stake in ITV from the current 17.9 per cent to less than half that amount at 7.5.

The statement released from the Department for Business reads:

‘The Secretary of State has decided to make an adverse public interest finding, taking account of the Competition Commission’s decision that this transaction results in a substantial lessening of competition within the UK market for all television.

‘The Secretary of State has also decided to impose the remedies recommended by the Competition Commission to address the substantial lessening of competition identified in their report: divestment of BSkyB’s shares in ITV down to a level below 7.5 [per cent] and behavioural undertakings from BSkyB requiring the company not to dispose of the shares to an associated person, nor to seek or accept representation on the board of ITV and not to reacquire shares in ITV.’

Thus ends one chapter of the tangled war of attrition between Sky and Virgin Media, with enough arcs and twists to be considered worthy of a Lost season. The Byzantine legal wrangling over the carriage fees farce is still ongoing, as is a separate but closely related joint complaint by BT, Setanta and Virgin over Sky’s so-called ‘vicious circle’ of control over sports broadcasting. Ofcom are to decide whether the latter case should be referred to the Commission by the end of the month, but it is looking unlikely.

BT’s beef is related to its battle for broadband – Ofcom regulation saw the telco having to open up it’s network of phonelines to rival ISPs, including Sky. BT are currently market leaders in the broadband market, whereas Sky sit pretty atop of the pay TV pile.

Sky gets the Arsenal

The forthcoming digital channel Arsenal TV, the official channel of the club, is now not going to be broadcast on Virgin Mediawhen it launches next Monday, due to capacity constrains.

The channel, operated by Virgin buddies Setanta, will temporarily only be available on Sky, channel 423.

Arsenal issued an apology on their official website: “Due to issues with Virgin Media’s channel capacity Arsenal TV will not be available on Virgin Media at launch… Arsenal would like to apologise on behalf of Virgin for this delay and re-assure all supporters that we are working with Virgin and Setanta to resolve this issue as soon as possible. Arsenal TV will be available to Virgin customers in the future and the date will be publicised widely as soon as it is confirmed.”

Gunners TV to launch in January

Today sees sportscasters Setanta kick off with their Arsenal Month; focussing on the six matches the Gunners face leading up to the launch of the new Arsenal TV channel

The Arsenal TV channel will launch in January and will provide exclusive interviews with staff and players, replays of all the top matches and classic matches, along with coverage of reserves games and documentaries on the history of the club and behind-the-scenes access to staff-only areas of the Emirates stadium.

Arsenal TV will be included in the Setanta Sports pack at no extra charge – the channel will be available on Virgin Media, and Sky. Whilst not available on BT Vision per se, BT Total Broadband customers can sign up for a years free subscription to Arsenal TV Online, which provides live audio coverage of all matches plus access to a large library of exclusive content. Arsenal TV will also be available to Setanta customers in the Republic of Ireland.

The upcoming Arsenal matches for December are:

Saturday 1st December – Aston Villa v Arsenal

Saturday 8th December – Middlesbrough v Arsenal

Saturday 15th December – Arsenal v Chelsea

Saturday 22nd December – Arsenal v Tottenham

Wednesday 26th December – Portsmouth v Arsenal

Saturday 29th December – Everton v Arsenal

Sportscaster raises £90m from shareholders for premiership putsch

Setanta Sports has snapped up the rights to broadcast the home and away qualifying matches for the 2010 World Cup and Euro 2012, whilst ITV will be showing only the home games and the BBC get show the 2010 finals.

After the humiliating exit from next year’s European championship last week, England have been afforded a chance to revenge against Croatia in the upcoming qualifier.

England’s defeat to Croatia captured an audience of 12.3m for the BBC last Wednesday, so the grudge match should prove to be lucrative for Setanta, who after netting £90m from issuing shares to investors, need to make good returns – last year, Setanta managed to accumulate £213 from private equity backers, which it used to secure live broadcast rights for a portion of the Premier League games. Setanta is currently not expected to turn a profit until mid 2009.

The broadcaster plans to spend the money on buying up rights to England international and FA Cup games, increasing its coverage of English football. So far, Setanta has around 400,000 subscribers in the UK and Ireland, and is set to launch the long-awaited Setanta Sports News channel on Sky and Virgin this Thursday.