Ofcom Proposes Forcing Sky to Share Content

This market is not a free market. For example, if I, as a consumer, want to watch Premiership football, I can only do so by signing up to Sky. To those people who say that the market is free, because if you don't like Sky you can sign up to another provider, well, that argument only works if the same content was available through other providers. This is a monopoly situation. I am not sure whether this situation is right or wrong, or whether Sky is abusing their monopoly powers, or whether they have the right to structure their pricing and revenue model as they wish, but I do know that we shouldn't be scared of calling a monopoly a monopoly.

Having now read through quite a bit of the ofcom document it basically boils down to this.

Sky will have to make their premium channels available to any platform for a price that ofcom will set. This price is 30% lower than the current rate Sky charge Virgin for the channels just now. They also have to provide any red button functionality that has actual content ie Champ League games and HD.

Ofcom also want to split the rights to first run Subscription on Demand movies so that Sky do not have them when they do not use them as the story says.

I fail to see how any of this can be a negative for anyone other than Sky. Sky will have to work harder to inovate now on their digital satelite platform as it will be the only way that they will hold onto customers who no longer need to use them.

@Frank but not so frank.

I was a Skysports subscriber (not by choice) and their scheduling was appalling and my complaints went unheeded and so I left and I haven't missed them.

As for quality of the BBC's and Sky's programming well I have commented on it here at TR and noted how The Times tv reviewer(s) find hardly any Sky programmes worth recommending while recommending a long list of BBC's! Oh Sky like the BBC's iPlayer don't they?

Anyone can throw money and buy up movies and programmes popularised by others like Lost, Eureka, Prison Break, Star Trek, Simpsons, etc etc. forcing viewers to subscribe as I had to but no more. What geniuses Sky are. Like some of their viewers.

At least neither of us is a fan of Ofcom.

I don't like the way how Sky offer their Sports packages.

I only want to watch football but to watch all their Premiership games I have to sign up to all 3 channels costing a lot more than signing up to Sky Sports 1 only. I don't care about Cricket, Rugby, Tennis etc.. why cant they shove those on SS2 & SS3 and keep SS1 for football..that I think would suit consumers much better than the current set-up.

Also, I think that Sky1 & sky2 should be free like Virgin1. The amount of adverts in between programming should make sky enough money as they would have more people watching by transmitting on Freeview etc..