There is a difference between "should" and "would".

In fact, I can't see how "by the end of this year we should be heading for up to 200 channels" has been interpreted as meaning they will deifnitely have at least 200 channels by the end of the year.

"Up to 200 channels" should be interpreted in the same way as "up to 20Mb broadband" should be .

And, indeed, it's also not entirely fair looking with hindsight at a statement that was made before the bank bailouts and all the other attendant troubles that hit the economy.

In May 2008, they may well have had more indications of interest than actually bore fruit in the end; but you can't castigate someone at a press conference for being positive, rather than saying "Well, we should have 200 channels by the end of the year, if all the people who said they're interested do sign on the dotted line, and nothing totally unforseen like, oh I don't know, the collapse of Lehman Brothers, say, causes problems with the economy."

i.e. Guaranteed never to exceed.

freesats biggest problem "it came too late " if only freesat came on stream 5 years or so ago it would be a great competitor to sky ,who has the strangle on things. And it looks will still do for the next 100 years.
there are a ,lot of free channels (esp shopping ones) but offcourse very few sky channels are on freeview. I think the govt should put pressure on them to allow say sky one and channel one and news programs free to look at .(FTA) otherwise sky will just have total control of satellite.

There's no reason why Sky should be forced to place channels that it's paying to operate somewhere they can be watched without generating revenue.

What the government (or the EU) most definitely should do is to end Sky's exemption from the normal rules that apply to monopolies and force them to sell people the channels they want one at a time. Things have moved on a long way from when this was not technically feasible and I've yet to see and credible objection to making then do that.

The main objection is that it would knock some of the less watched channels off the air. But then why should people be forced to subsidise channels that they don't want to watch? We already have that with the licence fee which can be justified to a degree in that the BBC can be considered a public service. Sky, on the other hand, most definitely cannot be so considered.

I don't agree with forcing sky to make some of their channels FTA. That's no different to forcing a car dealership to give away one car every time they sell ten cars, however I do believe that competition needs to be encouraged. Personally I blame the current situation on premier league football broadcasting rights.

The premier league coverage now is the worst it has even been for the consumer from a financial point of view.

Some games on Sky Sports 1, Sky Sports 2, ESPN, so for a die hard football fan to be sure of catching all the live games for their team, they now have to subscribe to all the above. In the past, you used to be able to subscribe to a single package and get access to all broadcast matches.

Firstly, I think Sky should be forced to put all football on one channel, instead of indiscriminately showing some games on SS1 and others on SS2. - fair enough if matches clash, but this is usually the exception. Just a nasty way of squeezing a few extra million pounds out of their customers every month.

In my opinion, to allow true competition between broadcasters that would benefit us consumers, no one broadcaster should be able to obtain exclusivity for coverage of any football game. The chances of this happening? With money being thrown around as it is in the premier league, I guess I'll have to wait for a cold day in hell.

freesat was not created to be a competitor to Sky.

From Freesat site

Dan.

Do you know of any platform in the world where you can do this with "basic mix channels"? It is not an economically feasible model - the administative costs would be a lot higher than the present model. Many of the less watched channels are provided by broadcasters that also produce some of the most watched channels so to maintain their economic profitably those broadcasters would hike prices to a lot higher to compensate for lost income from channels not subscribed to or to subsidise those channels.

Sky already dominate the satellite.Do you seriously think that what you propose would change anything?


Posters who "understand" the reason that Freesat was launched are in the main more than happy with it's performance.The criticisms come mainly from posters who expect to receive the sky equivalent for free!!

As much as new channels are always welcome, Freesat is great currently in my opinion.
It's a darn site better than Freetripe (Freeview).

Before the first TV station, was there any station in the world transmitting TV?

The fact that no business is doing something that would be less beneficial to the business and more beneficial to its customers is not really a surprise and not a reason why they should be allowed to continue in that way.


That's easy to say but I suspect that you'll have a lot of trouble proving such a ridiculous assertion.

I'm asking you to demonstrate why there should be any significant extra admin costs.

Otherwise I'm calling BS.


Again, that's nonsense.

If a channel is not watched then they close it down and don't have to pay for programming or the broadcast equipment or the transmission costs or the encryption fees. Seemples!

You're just attempting to support yet another element in the chain where the consumers are being forced to pay for things that they do not want.

Do you really think your idea is new? It has been mooted many times over the last twenty odd years that subscription TV (cable and satellite) has been around and has never yet AFAIK come into being. The nearest yet has been the proposals Real Digital attempted to put forward and where is that project now?

As for viability - you are going to start with an admistration charge for the account say £10 for a nice round figure - computer time to administer the accounts costs money (more variation in packages/choices available increases that considerably), satellite time authorising all the different package variations on a monthly basis, almost certainly new viewing cards with a significantly larger memory to store all the possible package variations, collecting subs costs money, staff to administer all the accounts and deal with queries costs money. Then you have a charge per channel £1 say - pretty soon you are getting beyond the cost of a basic one mix package from Sky and additional mixes only costing £1. Your model does not make any sense until you get to premium channels which could yes be sold at say £2 per channel for movies and say £4 per channel for Sports but then expect the channels be a lot more mixed in content than they are now.

Broadcasters would be extremely unlikely to agree to their channels being sold on a single channel basis - most have one or two very popular channels subsidising the rest of their channels. Your suggestion would mean a gross dimunition of choice and programming and lead to a few channels of reality shows and soaps and very little else.

In norway on rikstv you can pick indvidual channels like that for about £2-5 each plus the standard fee of £10/month
(the premium sports & movie channels cost abit more)

in Sweden on cable you can pick 8 favorite channels for a fixed fee of around £14/month

Straw man argument. I never even hinted that I thought the idea is new. I know many people who think the same, quite a few of whom would subscribe if they could pick channels.


They're not the most professional of outfits. It would obviously need either legislation or a big player.


Absolutely absurd for a non monopoly. How did you come up with that figure? It's just a wild guess chosen to support your overall argument, isn't it?


The above is just wild speculation based on nothing more than figures picked from thin air to try and make some point.


Again, you're just saying something with absolutely nothing to back it up.

But the crux of your 'argument' seems to be that the current situation where the aggregator and, possibly the broadcasters (although I can see no logic whatsoever to that argument), dictate what the consumer will be allowed to purchase and that s/he will be forced to subsidise channels that they do not want be allowed to continue indefinitely.

I appreciate that you want to support Sky and are doing you best to make a case for their continued monopoly practices but that isn't going to stop people demanding better consumer choice.

Even this would be a vast improvement on the current situation where you have to pay considerably more just to get a single type type of programming.

One reason you can't break things down into individual channels is not specifically that it is technically or administratively difficult (which it is) but because it is economically not sensible. Pay packages are divided into lots because those lots pay for each other. If you charge for a group of channels then some channels can be worth less than others, much like insurance which depends on some people claiming less than others. But if you divided out the wheat from the chaff then you would have a less attractive package because it wouldn't be so bulky and then you would have to charge less, in which case the margins would be squeezed.

The operator could have less channels but then they would have a less broad market to address because the person who absolutely loves and must have 'The Owl Channel' would be less inclined to take a subscription and that would lower subscriber numbers overall. A careful balance must be kept between the number of channels and what people are willing to pay. Again it comes back to market forces, if so many people didn't want to pay for it something would give, but it hasn't. The market in general accepts Sky pricing for what it is, some (or even many) of them may not like it but in general it is economically sustainable.

Personally, I think that the football clubs and Premiership have very much more to answer for than Sky! Sky are just doing business the most sustainable way for them, I am sure Sky would love to pay less for rights because then they could drop the price and get more subscribers, but as it is the football rights prices have set the market. Sky may always bid more, but if someone else is willing to pay a price for that event (perhaps to steal it from Sky) then that will influence the Sky bid.

God knows I am not a sky apologist, I am a commercial realist who actually works with these deals on a weekly basis.

All you are doing above is saying that this is the status quo and for the status quo to continue we cannot change it.

But the status quo is wrong. In this country we have a free market for most things and subscription TV is one of the very few (along with such things as standard letter delivery for domestic senders) where the market is grotesquely contorted in the interests of Sky, the broadcasters, and possibly the viewers of some very low audience channels.

It is wrong that a commercial enterprise should be allowed to force people to pay for things that they don't want in order to get the things they do. Imagine the uproar if the supermarkets tried to force you to buy a 'bread mix' of white, brown, wholemeal, rye and pumpkin seeds when all you wanted was a white roll!

We have the BBC for PSB and it should not be for a commercial enterprise that is not in any way accountable to elected representatives to dictate who will subsidise whom in the matter of TV channel provision.

You really were well off, were't you.
We had only ONE B&W Channel that started around 5pm and finished around 11pm.
Ah but... During the summer we had the privilege of receiving Spanish TV, via Tropspheric Ducting.
Many's the Bull Fight we watched - we didn't have much of a choice, it completely wiped out RTE1, night after night.

You were lucky .... we thought it was an ant fighting on our 5" TV.

No a considered estimate knowing quite a bit more about the industry than you appear to - now proven as a good estimate from the charges that exist in Norway

No I want to show you that your model is not viable and would end with a lot less choice of channels (both pay and free) although your vehement anti-Sky stance gives you no chance of seeing basic logic and business economics.

How can they be a monopoly - you have Virgin, BT Vision, TopUpTV, and a couple of IPTV services all operating similar package subscription packages.

It's very easy to make wild claims about knowing more about the industry than others.

I know that it does not cost £10, or anything even approaching that to administer an account. I only pay £5.50 for my internet connection and that involves not only the account management but also the actual provision of a broadband service.

There are only two continuing costs involved in administering a Sky account: Collecting the money once a month and sending out a 'keep working' signal every so often.

Changes in channel subscriptions could easily be charged for so there is no need to include that cost in the account maintenance.

Just because one other country has one company (possibly a monopoly) charging a certain amount does not 'prove' anything.


Disapproving of a Sky's pricing policy does not mean that you are 'vehement anti-Sky'

Your position seems to be that broadcasters are cross subsidising unpopular channels by forcing aggregators to sell them in packages with more popular ones.

This should be completely unacceptable in the commercial world. Let people buy what they want so that the successful, watched, channels are freed from having to subsidise unsuccessful, rarely watched, channels and can use their revenue to improve their programming.


How many of those offer satellite TV? One.

From the link posted in #20 , it did state which Christmas......2008

I think he was joking.

Many of us here agree with you, but you are wasting your energy complaining about it here. Why not contact Ofcom?