The Great Debate UK
Ofcom summons up courage to tackle BSkyB
- Steven Barnett is professor of communications at the University of Westminster, and a writer and commentator on broadcasting issues. His first book, published in 1990, was on the relationship between television and sport. The opinions expressed are his own.-
Today is a historic day for British television: the first time in its brief six-year history that the supposedly uber powerful Ofcom has been prepared to flex its muscles to tackle the brute force of BSkyB’s overwhelming dominance in pay television.
It is an issue that has blighted the television industry for years, disadvantaged consumers, put companies out of business, and sent competitors, regulators and politicians running for cover.
Finally, after three years of exhaustive analysis, the regulator has had enough: BSkyB has been ordered to lower the prices at which it sells its premium rate channels to other platform operators such as Virgin and BT.
Consumers may even be able to buy sports and movie channels without being forced to pay for a bundle of countless other unwanted channels.
We can now expect a blaze of carefully orchestrated outrage not just from the hugely influential head of BSkyB itself, James Murdoch, but from its formidable number of friends and allies. For the power and influence which this single corporation exerts on British public and political life is quite extraordinary.
We have already heard the first rumblings from powerful sports bodies, threatening legal action and warning of “serious consequences” for sport.
Should major sporting events be reserved for free-to-air TV?
-Steven Barnett is professor of communications at the University of Westminster and has written extensively about the Sky deal and cricket for the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. The opinions expressed are his own.-
David Davies’ review panel on UK sport’s “crown jewels” – the list of sporting events which have to be reserved for free-to-air television – has proposed adding significantly to the existing list of 10 events.
Most controversially it wants to see cricket’s Ashes Test matches, part of the package sold to Sky five years ago, back on mainstream television. Given its terms of enquiry, the Davies panel’s report was bound to be either lame or contentious. Thankfully, they have chosen contentious.
We’ll be hearing some cries of anguish from Sky over the next few weeks, but that’s to be expected. BSkyB’s hugely successful business model depends on exclusive access to sport, and you can’t blame Rupert Murdoch for understanding long ago the commodity value of exclusive live sport on television. He famously told an annual meeting of News Corp in 1996 that sport was to be the “battering ram” for expansion of his global pay television network.
And Sky does it brilliantly: three sports channels, pioneering innovations in coverage and much more domestic and international sport on offer than than ever before. But this array of sporting choice comes at a price – in excess of 600 pounds per year if you want it all. Most people don’t: pay TV in Britain is still a minority activity.
That shifts the focus of responsibility to the sports bodies – and this is where the real challenge lies. Can they be trusted to represent the wider public interest of universal audience access for their blue riband events?
Increasingly the answer is no, as cricket eloquently demonstrated. The county game was struggling and Sky made an offer in 2004 that no terrestrial broadcaster could reasonably match. Result: Test cricket vanished from most viewers’ screens, and a peak viewing figure of 7.4 million on Channel 4 when England won the Ashes in 2005 plunged to just 1.9 million this year on Sky – beaten even by the 2.3 million who were watching Songs of Praise on BBC1 at the same time.
I totally agree with this article. I am certainly not one of society’s “disadvantaged” but it is years since I saw any major sporting event on my own television. I am not prepared to pay £40 a month or whatever for a load of old rubbish just for the privilege of being able to watch the odd England match. I would sooner go to the pub. But I would be interested to know how the Aussies pay for their free-to-air access?
Where I live in North Wales I am unable to get Freeview, so that means I have to subscribe to Sky. Well, if I want more than the basics I have to pay, yet the variety of Freeview stations exceed the stations on Sky unless I am a paid up subscriber! For example Dave is free to air on Freeview and yet on Sky I have to pay.
I could go for FreeSat, but that would involve me splashing out on another box, but again, the channels are limited and I have no option for additional services, so Sky does provide a service, but sadly for the TV that I watch, I am paying through the nose.
What grieves me more is if I was to unsubscribe from Sky (since I have a Sky+ box) if I wanted to use the recording facility on the box that I bought, I have to pay £10 a month! In short, they have me over the metaphorical barrel.
I would welcome a package that allows me to pay for what I watch, say like an electric metre, where you pay per hour. For a 30 day month (at £18 a month) that would equate to 2.5 pence an hour of television viewing, I suppose for prime time viewing, films, sports, they could charge more, say 5 pence a hour… (?)
As for the recording facility, I own the machine, so why should I pay for that? It just like owning a VCR, just a digital version. – That’s what I was told by a Sky employee. Any thoughts there?
I will not pay an extra £10 a month for HD, that’s absurd, nor will I subscribe to Sky’s upcoming 3D service. It’s only TV at the end of the day.
It’s about time Ofcom intervened, some people don’t get a choice of alternative suppliers for TV, telecommunications or broadband without being subjet to additional fees.