Is Virgin still missing Sky One?
 

Or has it been restored?

Sky wanted DOUBLE the amount of money for the Sky 1 and 2 channels, and Virgin was not prepared to put the price of the subscription up to cover the price. Sky is trying to force people to ditch cable and go to Sky. [thumbdown]

yup, still missing. Also Sky three, news & sports news are being pulled from freeview in the summer.
Virgin has gone the the high court over this, but now sky wants virgin to drop the court action, and resume negotiations...

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6549541.stm

Yep. Sky tried this before and was bitchslapped by the government and its viewers IIRC (back in the good old cable days).

Looks like they haven't learned their lesson. I give it a few more months before we have it back. [rolleyes]

No and TBH, I wouldn't be surprised if they never get it back. They are much more likely to buy the shows themselves (and put them on OD) when the next season's bidding starts.

But if the shows on Sky One are important to you, you might want to keep satellite TV. I just get them off iTunes US now, so it doesn't really bother me anymore.

I've got Sky Sports 3, but I thought that Sky News and Sky Sport News were already pulled.

Do you guys still have them?


Maybe I should retune my channels?

Oh well my TV has built in freeview, so I can still watch one channel and record another, and at least SkyThree and Skysports news for now.

Errr, no.
Take a read about the final deals that were available to Virgin.
I do lihe way that Sky have been painted as the bad boys here.
Sky 1 has some great programs and why? Because they pay for them.

When you are spending a lot of money to get shows and then finding a load of people are illegally downloading them anyway they have to still make money.
People of course don't understand that we all lose when shows are illegally downloaded - because the likes of Sky won't buy them and if nobody buys them then they get cancelled etc.
But put that argument to your average downloader and you'll get the usual "Me wants free download, so me has it" reply.

At one point towards the end of the negotiations Sky were in a position where it would cost on average each Cable viewer an extra 30p a month to keep the Sky channels (end user price, after Virgin, etc had put their profit in etc).
Ask the majority of Cable viewers and they would happily pay this extra 30p.

This is very much Virgin not wanting to pay for Sky because for some reason they feel they are in the financial position where they can compete with Sky for the rights to shows.

There was more to it than that. Sky also wanted Virgin to remove SkyOne from their base package (basically because it works out cheaper than satelite if Virgin includes it in the base package). So for many people it would work out at paying more than just 30p extra/month.

Wasn't it 3p per customer per day?

Also I believe that Virgin were upset because Sky also reduced the amount they paid for the UK channels, of which Virgin are co-owners or such.

They're both as bad as one another IMO. Mind you I haven't missed Sky One at all, and I used to watch Lost, 24, BSG, Dresden Files and more every week.

I don't see the point in paying for TV anymore. If I wanna watch a sports event I'll watch it down the pub. If I wanna watch a movie, I'll download 'em and the same for TV.

Freeview has more than enough for everyday TV and doesn't cost anything. Will be interesting when freesatalite comes out.