Liberty Global buys Virgin Media: More of the UK to get cable?

It's been announced that Liberty Global has bought Virgin Media, the UK cable operator, for around £10billion.  According to one report I read, some analysts were predicting that Liberty might actually invest in new cable infrastructure to increase the reach of Virgin Media here in the UK, which is currently 55% of the population. 

I sincerely hope those analysts are right.  Virgin Media has 4.9million subscribers, whilst Sky, the only competition for Virgin Media, has over 10 million subscribers and covers almost all of the UK.  If Virgin Media is to be truly competitive with Sky, then it needs more cable layed to cover the 45% of the UK that it doesn't already cover. 

Of course, this will require many tens of billions of pounds in order to provide that extra coverage, as all the areas that need to be covered are mainly rural areas.  All the main cities have been cabled already.  Areas like Cornwall have no cable infrastructure at all, and some areas like North and East Devon and Somerset have areas nearby that have been cabled, such as Exeter and Bristol.  But in all those areas, and many others, Sky is the only choice for Subscription Television. 

If Liberty Global do invest in new cable infrastructure, then Sky will have a proper competitor for the first time since On Digital folded back in 2002.  There is no doubt that the recent phone hacking scandal has weakened Sky and more especially, parent company NewsCorp, so it will be interesting to see how they handle a stronger competition in the Liberty Global owned Virgin Media.

Update: Fabrice Muamba Collapse

BBC News now reporting that Fabrice Muamba is critically ill in intensive care.  Sky News is still reporting his condition as stable.  Both maybe right, but this dichotomy is not helpful to those of us who want the best. 

Come on BBC, Sky.  Get your act together.

Update: Sky News now updated their ticker to say he is "critically ill".

ITV finally gets something right.

Today, I noticed that finally, ITV1+1 shows the correct region. Until recently, in the South West of England, you couldn't guarantee that every programme that aired on ITV1, would air 1 hour later on ITV1+1. That was because whilst our ITV1 region is Westcountry West, our ITV1+1 region was Wales, and there were several notable differences. Regional news was different and there were minor variations in the schedule.

Now, we have the right region on ITV1+1, Westcountry West, on both Freeview and Sky. Knowing ITV's past history as well as I do, and having only heard about changes happening on the Sky platform, I was half expecting to find ITV1+1 had been changed to Westcountry East on Sky, and to still be Wales on Freeview. Thankfully, ITV managed to surpass my low expectations, so congratulations ITV for managing to do that.

Unfortunately, I have even less expectation of ITV doing anything that would make me think they would be getting anywhere close to providing a proper regional broadcasting service.

Dish Network vs FOX. On the digital battleground.

This one almost passed me by, so it's nice that I actually caught up with this story now. Dish Network is having a contretant with Fox over their sports and entertainment channels, so Fox News and Fox Business are unaffected.

This primarily affects FX, Fox Sports Net and National Geographic Channel. However, in about a month's time, Fox Television Network and My Network TV could well be affected as well.

Obviously, both sides have launched websites detailing their case. But in addition to those, I'd like to remind you of one thing.

Fox is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns DirecTV, the direct opposition in the US Satellite TV market to Dish Network.

Murdoch likes people to think what he tells them to think. In that same area of satellite television, he owns Sky in the UK, Star in Asia and Foxtel in Australia. There are other subsidiary operations linked to those companies.

So Rupert Murdoch is used to getting his own way. The fact that Dish are standing up to him, is interesting. We will see how this story develops.

Sky Sports News to leave Freeview... why?

British Sky Broadcasting have once again shown that they have a very clouded view of the media landscape, clouded by their desire to get everyone paying extra for TV channels.

They have decided to replace Sky Sports News on Freeview with a timeshift version of Sky 3.

One question, why?

Sky Sports News has been one of the success stories of Freeview. It more than tripled it's audience, in the early going, and has continued to see success all the way, outperforming Sky News and Sky 3. So why take it off Freeview now, thereby potentially losing 2/3 of the audience that has been consistently there since it's arrival on Freeview back in 2002? And why replace it with of all things, a timeshift channel?

Sky's strategy here seems more to be professional suicide than successful broadcaster.

OFCOM and ‘sexy’ phone-in channels

OFCOM has repeatedly had problems regulating the kind of sexy phone in channels that appear on Sky in the 900s section of the EPG. 

Just recently, OFCOM fined two companies for broadcasting sexy material straight after the watershed on FTA channels.  Now, bear in mind, the watershed is 9pm.  By OFCOM’s own definition…

“…The watershed only applies to television. The watershed is at 2100. Material unsuitable for children should not, in general, be shown before 2100 or after 0530.”

It was material unsuitable for children, and it was broadcast after the watershed, yet they were still fined.

Additionally in the same Broadcast Bulletin, OFCOM found the channels in breach on about 10 separate occasions, despite the fact that only 1 of these occasion actually contravenes OFCOM’s own rules about R18-strength material.  All other incidents related to material comparable to those seen in movies rated 18 by the BBFC.

This is why I find the whole business of regulation these days to be totally out of sync with reality.  We see more violence on television dramas and movies than we see sex, and sex is regarded as the more corrupting, yet there has been many occasions when words encouraging violent acts have brought those acts about.  That’s called Incitement, and its against the law.  Yet the right wing will say, “NO, sorry, you can’t encourage someone to commit a violent act.”, yet in the same breath, they will say that the depiction of sex is a “…corrupting influence…”.  There’s only one thing to say to a viewpoint like that.

“THAT’S A TOTALLY HYPOCRITICAL AND NONSENSICAL VIEWPOINT.  The facts do NOT back up your views.”

But then the right wing doesn’t seem to let facts get in the way of their own delusions.

In OFCOM’s case here, they are trying to walk what they consider to be a tightrope, when in fact, beneath that “tightrope” is a canyon the size of the Grand Canyon, with the pro-censorship brigade on one side, and reality (and just about everybody else) on the other.  There’s no fine line between the camps, there’s a huge gap, and you’re NEVER gonna satisfy the pro-censorship camp, so don’t waste your time trying to. 

Besides which, the Virgin Media, Freeview, Freesat and Sky platforms all have a facility called PIN protection.  Basically, you can block access to programmes and channels you don’t want kids to watch by setting a PIN. 

This smacks of censorship by stealth, and to be frank, it is not OFCOM’s job to be am self-appointed censor.  That the BBFC’s job.  And if material is shown that IS comparable to material shown in films that have been rated by the BBFC as 18, then OFCOM HAS NO BUSINESS TRYING TO CENSOR IT.

Freesat launches in UK

Finally a new competitor to Sky has emerged in the UK. Freesat is a BBC and ITV joint venture designed to provide a subscription free alternative to Sky. Currently with around 80 channels, and more coming on stream soon, Freesat looks like a decent competitor.

All the major channels from BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and S4/C are there with Channel 5 expected to follow soon. News channels are well represented with BBC News, AlJazeera and EuroNews, whilst movie channels are also well represented with the two True Movies channels plus Movies 4 Men. Unfortunately sport is not currently represented on Freesat, but with a currently expected 200 channels expected to be available soon, Freesat could well provide the alternative to paying out a monthly subscription to Sky or Cable that many people have been looking for.

XM / Sirius Merger could be approved imminently.

There are a lot of reports out there, far too many to link, but they all suggest, like this one, that approval for the merger between XM Satellite Radio and Sirius Satellite radio is due to come imminently from the US Department of Justice.

This smells to me very similar to the British Satellite Broadcasting / Sky Television, which was allowed to go ahead, despite the fact that it was against the rules that BSB were told to work by by the IBA. Sky had the deep pockets of Rupert Murdoch and News Corp to fall back on. BSB had no such benefactor, and most of their shareholders were worried about the upcoming 1991 Channel 3(ITV) licence process.

Sky were the 'winners' in that so called merger. They basically absorbed BSB into their company with the token changing of the name to "British Sky Broadcasting" rather than tell it like it really was, Sky basically swallowing up BSB.

The real similarity here though is that XM and Sirius, like Sky and BSB, are both losing money, hand over fist, quarter by quarter. Because these two are the only competing satellite radio services in the US and Canada, this really shouldn't happen, in much the same way that BSB and Sky should not have happened. But you know it's going to. History says the merger will go ahead, the market says the merger will go ahead, my head says the merger will go ahead, but my heart does not want it to. I cannot abide the creation of a monopoly by a market that is supposed to favour competition.

The shareholders have voted for it, now we wait for the confirmation from the DoJ that, as we expect, this merger will happen, despite what we know to be in the better interests of everyone. If the market is so good, then let the market decide, and if the market decides that neither should survive, then so be it.

Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 07 October 2007

A bit later than usual this week, because there are less obvious stories this week.

The main one however, is Virgin 1. In it's first week of operation, V1 manages a credible 0.5 share / 13.8 weekly reach. This equates to just over 6.5 million viewers across the week. Ther timeshift version manages a 0.1 / 4.3, which is just over 2 million viewers across the week.

Compare this to FTN's final week numbers which were 0.2 / 6.2, which is just under 3 million viewers across the week, plus a negligable share and 1.6 weekly reach, which is 759,000 viewers across the week, and you can see that initial indications for Virgin 1 look promising. More viewers in general have turned to the effectively rebranded FTN channel.

This does look like the first shots being fired in a new battle between Sky and Virgin Media, and the battleground could well be Freeview, as I mentioned previously in a post here at the MediaBlog about a month ago.

One interesting note this week on Timeshift channels. Just out of interest, here are the top 5.

E4 +1 - 0.6 / 13.3
Channel 4 +1 - 0.5 / 14.9
UKTV Gold +1 - 0.4 / 9.2
Living +1 - 0.4 / 7.9
ITV2 +1 - 0.3 / 8.8

It is very interesting to note that E4 has the most timeshift viewers, more than the most popular digital channel, ITV2.

Now, to the "Hall Of Shame", once again, in no particular order...

Sky Travel Shop - 50,000
Anime Central - 82,000
Business Channel - 79,000
Community Channel - 106,000
Diva TV - 106,000
Fashion TV - 122,000
Film 24 - 130,000
Golf Channel - 153,000
Hollywood TV - 185,000
Legal TV - 140,000
Life One - 184,000
MusFlash - 51,000
MUTV - 45,000
Overseas Property - 69,000
Performance Channel - 162,000
Real Estate TV - 175,000
Rockworld TV - 70,000
Setanta Golf - 122,000
Simply TV - 33,000
The Baby Channel - 81,000
The Travel Channel +1 - 196,000
Wedding TV - 124,000
Wedding TV +1 - 123,000
XLeague.TV - 95,000

The interesting thing to note is that Baby TV, which was on the list last week, has come off the publically released list this week. Why I don't know, but when channels choose not to release ratings info, it's a sure fire sign of trouble. Baby TV announced on 8th October 2007 that Fox International Channels has acquired a "...major stake..." in the channel.

Newly launched Diva TV, from the team behind The Hallmark Channel, is new to the list, with a paltry 106,000 viewers. Despite airing programmes like The Oprah Winfrey Show and The Late Show with David Letterman, all the channel has so far managed to succeed in doing is pull in one of the lowest rated launches ever in the history of television. They say they are "...sassy, sexy and totally seductive...", whilst in reality they are nothing of the sort.

OFCOM investigates UK pay TV

At the request of BT, Setanta, Virgin Media and Top Up TV, OFCOM are to investigate the world of UK based pay television.



Whilst I am all in favour of an investigation, I do have my doubts as to whether anything will happen as a result. Ofcom have yet to take any deicisions that have real impact on the industry, and in pay TV, there needs to be something that has to happen.

You see, BSkyB is THE dominant force in UK pay TV , and it is the only one with national coverage across the UK. Virgin Media has a lot of coverage in the cities, but because of the prohibitive cost of cabling rural areas, has no coverage outside of the cities. Digital Terrestrial currently only has about 70% coverage, but that will grow as the analogue signals are switched off in the various areas until 2012.

Sky have already seen off two potential opponents in the pay TV market, first by merging with British Satellite Broadcasting (BSB) in November 1990, and second with the collapse of On/ITV Digital in March 2002. It's only with the recent-ish meger of the NTL and Telewest cable operations that cable has emerged as any kind of a powerhouse in the pay television arena, and it is still limited by the fact that not every house in the UK has a cable connection.

I would like to see Sky undergo some kind of limitation, possibly have them lose control of their EPG. After all, they cannot control who broadcasts on the satellites, as Sky do not own the satellites. The Satellites themselves are owned by a company called Societie European De Satellites, based in Luxembourg.

I would also like to see Sky denied permission to create a pay TV service on DTT. They want to have Sky One, Sky News, Sky Movies and Sky Sports, available on a subscription only basis on DTT, much in the same way that when they started on Astra 1A back in February 1989, they had Sky Channel, Sky News, Sky Movies and Eurosport (at the time they were a partner in the EuroSport operation, but left it after merging with BSB.)

Sky are like Microsoft, they are too dominant in the market, and do need to be reined in. Sky have behaved in a very anti-competitive way, in forcing all the channels in their package to accept much lower subscriber rates, including the Virgin Media channels, whilst at the same time, trying to force up the rates that Virgin Media pay for the Sky channels. If this isn't classic anti-competitiveness, I don't know what is.

I would like to see Ofcom actually do something about Sky, but I don't actually believe that Ofcom will do anything. Such a lack of action, in a market that actually demands it, would be postitively criminal.

ITV in crisis

ITV has been facing up to some major problems recently, and arguably, it has not been coping very well with them. In what has been a tough time for the commercial broadcaster, the ITV companies have faced major problems with ITV Digital, falling revenues from advertising, falling audience figures with BBC1 and Multi-channel TV benefiting the most and a greater than average number of new programme failures, including some very high profile ones such as Shafted. The question is, what happened to ITV to allow it to fall so far?

There are a number of potential reasons why ITV’s fall has been so bad. One potential reason can be traced all the way back to the creation of Independent Television back in 1954. Originally, the Independent Television Authority was supposed to have created 2 commercial networks, each with additional licenced programme providers. But it ended up being only one commercial network, and no additional programme providers, which made things difficult for Associated Rediffusion and ATV London in the initial months of Independent Television. These days, such an arrangement with additional programme providers licenced for ITV would undoubtedly have seen more of the old franchisees become production companies, and also some good companies that never quite made it to being franchise holders, providing programming. It would also make for a more competitive ITV in terms of programming.

Another potential reason why ITV is in possible crisis goes back to the 1990 Broadcasting Act. In the act, it allowed the ITV companies to merge with each other, and potentially be bought by other companies too. Why was this a bad thing? Well, ironically for the same reason that lack of additional licenced programme providers was a bad thing. Instead of having a competitive ITV with 15 companies and the threat of losing their franchise if they didn’t perform up to scratch, you now have just 5 companies, who know their licences are pretty safe, and therefore less competitive, less challenging and less satisfying in terms of programming.

Another potential reason lies in what has been recently a major situation in broadcasting terms, and that is the situation between ITV and Sky. In 1998, ITV decided not to launch on Sky Digital, despite the fact that BBC1, BBC2, Channel 4 and Channel 5 were all launching on both Sky Digital and On Digital. On Digital, nowadays know as ITV Digital, is owned by Carlton and Granada, the two biggest ITV companies. Granada have some history with Sky as Granada was involved in the British Satellite Broadcasting venture of 1990, which ended with BSB merging with Sky. Carlton had channels of its own that it didn’t want on Sky, and had previously restricted them to just Cable. Carlton and Granada felt that On Digital needed an advantage over Sky Digital, and they felt that ITV would give them that advantage. So ITV refused to launch on Sky Digital, and also refused to launch ITV2 on Sky Digital. This move was to prove costly in financial terms with many millions of pounds of advertising revenue missed because of this one move. ITV1 and ITV2 were to launch in 2001 on Sky Digital, but the damage had been done. The move had cost them advertising revenue, and it had cost them viewers too, and the longer they stayed off Sky Digital, the more it was going to cost them in terms of viewers and advertising revenue. So, they finally put up and launched on Sky Digital.

Another potential reason lies in the fact that On/ITV Digital always looked to compete with Sky Digital. Alongside the fact that ITV had been having something of a tiff with Sky for many years, going back to the lack of agreement between Sky News and ITN, over ITN acting as programme producer for Sky News, in 1988, and continuing through Sky’s failed attempts to replace ITN as ITV’s news provider, when you put all that together, you see ITV trying to compete with Sky, one by not providing ITV and ITV2 on Sky Digital, also by trying to use ITV’s advantage as a terrestrial broadcaster to persuade people to go to On Digital, owned of course by two of the biggest ITV companies. Put that very complicated mix together, and what do you have? You have a channel provider on Digital Terrestrial, trying to compete with a channel provider on Digital Satellite, where really they shouldn’t be competing at all. On Digital was the only licenced digital pay-TV provider for Digital Terrestrial, and Sky Digital was the only digital satellite pay-TV provider. In theory, they shouldn’t have been competing with each other as they were two different markets. However, in practice, people were comparing the Sky/On situation to the Sky/BSB situation of 1990, long before either side were actually transmitting digital programmes, and this wasn’t helped by On Digital themselves, whose advertising was at least initially quite blatantly stating their competitive agenda.

Whichever reason it was, and whichever way you look at it, it comes down to competition. Sky had had no real competition in the Multi-channel arena after their merger with BSB, and ITV in itself was less competitive because the number of ITV companies had dropped from 15 to 5, and because the franchises were no longer being seen as under threat every whit and while, so there was no pressure on ITV to perform. Now ITV is in this situation. To this writer, it looks like a crisis, a crisis of ITV’s own making. They wanted the ability to merge stations, to eventually become 1 giant national ITV. They wanted the franchises to be easier to renew, therefore creating less pressure, and supposedly more time for increased investment. They wanted the greener, less regulated grass on the other side of the fence. Now they’re there, they are finding it’s leaving a foul taste in their mouths, but instead of backtracking, ITV seek to blame the BBC and Sky for their own problems. There’s an old saying. It says, “You reap what you sow”.

So, how can ITV get themselves out of this predicament? Well, the only way they can do it is to go back to being more regulated, and back to being a commercially funded, not commercially driven, public service broadcaster. They must waste less money on unnecessarily extravagant set designs, cut down the amount that is just given away to shareholders, and start re-investing in the people who really count, the viewers.