And The Battle Of Sky Versus Virgin Continues

By Author: Ivan Cuxeva
Total Articles: 782
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In a battle of broken relations both companies Sky and Virgin are trying to explain the possible reasons as to why things are going so bad in their media relations, in one side we hear about a possible intervention by Sky in order to prevent Virgin's takeover on ITV. So what are the reasons for this dispute according to both of these companies and how will they affect cable TV viewers? Let's find out.

Virgins Media part of the story:

According to this company sky is trying to sway their customers into switching to another service provider, they are trying to accomplish this goal by denying the access to basic cable channels which broadcast popular shows. Virgin media has approximately 3.3 million subscribers who are able to get their cable service from this company however with the loss of big shows such as Lost, 24 and even The Simpsons which premiered in the Sky one channel, consumers are now puzzled by the idea of having to pay the same price regardless of the loss of these basic channels.

Virgin Media has said that they have no plan to lower the costs of their services because there still able to ...
... provide great value for their subscribers by offering well over 2700 hours of video on demand some people however, may not agree with such decisions.

Sky's part of the story:

The company is simply not able to provide the basic cable channels to Virgin Media because they are not willing to take their asking price which according to Virgin is more than double than the fee they are already paying. In order to justify the asking price, Sky has said that they had only set such number according to the benefits the cable viewers are getting from their channels which are also offering content in high-definition.

From an investor point of view sky has a lot to lose if advertising revenue, by not providing the channels and abiding with Virgin Media's proposal they could be losing nearly £45 million, according to the Sky's studies these numbers are inflated because they could only lose as much as £20 million, but still from an investor's point of view this is not a good thing at all. To summarize the list of channels which are relevant to this deal we have: Sky One, Sky Travel, Sky News and Sky Sports News.