The whole Sky and Virgin Media argument has now grown into such a childish spat it’s amazing that Rupert Murdoch and Richard Branson aren’t sat on the floor of the local Asda crying in a temper.
It started when Sky bundled together a larger package of crappy channels and tried to sell them at an inflated rate to Virgin cable. It’s a standard Sky practice – if you want one or two good channels you have to end up paying for a load of crap ones too.
Virgin went mad and spat their dummy out, stating that it was far too much cash and they didn’t want half the channels. They then ran a very public advertising campaign which basically said, “Sky are rubbish, they’re asking for far too much money for us to buy and provide their channels on our cable platform”
Sky then threw their toys out of the pram and started a new advertising campaign directly aimed at grabbing Virgin customers. “Don’t Lose Lost”, said some of them. Virgin also experienced lots of “strange interruptions” on Sky channels.
Virgin then had a paddy and, after the channels were removed, they altered the names. Sky News suddenly renamed to “Sky Snooze try BBC”, which Sky Sports News altered to “Old Sky Sports Snooze”. Both carried this image (right)…
Sky then complained, calling it “childish”…. errr.. which they, of course, weren’t being.
Virgin then pulled the names and Richard Branson said sorry.
Now Sky want direct access to the Virgin cable platform so that they can sell their channels directly to Virgin customers. Virgin said no, so around we go again.
Luckily, I’m on Sky (although I don’t feel too lucky at times – especially when the monthly charges come out of the account)