Sky shuts the Picnic basket
Friday, September 12th, 2008Satcaster fed up with regulatory heel draggage
Sky have temporarily put the kibosh on their proposed Picnic digital TV service, following the non-emergence of the Ofcom report that was due to be published this spring.
“The blunt truth is that Ofcom has spent 18 months looking at our proposals and there is no end in sight. The Picnic team have done everything they can to prepare for launch and there’s nothing left to be achieved until Ofcom makes its mind up,” said a Sky spokesperson, who added that “no business can go on like that.”
With Picnic, Sky had intended to replace its current line up of channels on the Freeview platform – that’s Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three – with premium Sky Movies and Sky Sports content, and the flagship channel Sky One. Picnic would be available either on its own, or as part of a bundle deal including fixed-line calls and broadband services in the same vein to its See Speak Surf bundles, and would require potential customers to purchase a new MPEG4 compatible set-top box.
The proposal was initially submitted back in February 2007, on the eve of the missing channel hoo-hah with Virgin Media, and prompted a response from rival providers Setanta and Top-Up TV.
