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.

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.

Setanta Sports News launch date confirmed.

Just a few days ago I reported that Setanta Sports News would be added to the BARB figures on November 29th. Now, Digital Spy are reporting that November 29th has been cofirmed by Setanta and Virgin Media as the official launch date for the ITN-produced station.

The channel promises headlines every 20 minutes and will launch on Virgin Media channel 518 and on free-to-air digital satellite. No idea yet about position on the Sky EPG.

This promises to be a major new addition, and the possibility of this channel coming to Freeview remains very strong in my honest opinion. This is the first new sports news channel since EuroSport 2 replaced EuroSport News on the Sky platform. Contray to popular belief, EuroSport News didn't close, and continues to air in Asia and Australia. Indeed the news broadcasts on EuroSport 2 are simply relayed from EuroSport News, with branding changed as required. Perhaps this might cause EuroSport to reconsider bringing EuroSport News back to the UK and European markets, especially since EuroSport 2 is using less and less news coverage these days and providing more programming of its own.

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.

Ratings Review: BARB 5th June 2007

I haven't been following the ratings too much recently, but I do notice in the latest publicly available figures on the BARB website, some very interesting stats.

It is noticeable that Sky One has lost a lot of ground and is now pulling in it's lowest viewing figures ever. Just a 1.1 share / 15.7 weekly reach. It is even more noticeable, that whilst Sky Three has a lower share than Sky One (0.7), the weekly reach figures are better (17.9). Obviously the Sky vs Virgin Media incident is doing Sky One a great deal of damage.

In terms of share of viewing this week, Sky One is now behind the likes of BBC Three (1.2), CBeebies (1.2), E4 (1.2), ITV3 (1.4), ITV2 (1.8) and Sky Sports 1 (2.4). Sky One has never fallen this low and it remains to be seen just what will be done, particularly in regards to Sky Three's prescence on Freeview and the Sky / Virgin Media situation.

Now, for the worst performers of the week. These channels rate so low on share that it's between 0 and 0.1, so we rank them by weekly reach instead. The worst of the worst is Setanta Sports 2, which only broadcasts on Saturdays and Sundays, in a similar way to Sky Sports 2's early years. They rank just 29,000 viewers this week. Then comes MUTV (48,000), The Business Channel (50,000), Legal TV (90,000) and Rockworld TV (92,000).

Setanta may be making a big deal out of the fact that they have Premiership Football from August, but their current ratings are incredibly low. In fact, Setanta Sports 1, which now broadcasts on both Sky and Digital Terrestrial (note: Digital Terrestrial, not Freeview, as you have to pay a subscription), only gets 205,000 viewers per week, and doesn't score high enough on the share of viewing table to get a 0.1, but does at least avoid a complete 0. Out of all the Sports channels that we can track on the BARB ratings, only the Golf Channel UK comes in with a worse performance than Setanta Sports 1 (159,000) and the next worst above Setanta Sports 1 is the now defunkt Prem Plus, which scored 252,000 for one of the last matches they ever showed. Setanta Sports have their work cut out.

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.