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Virgin vs Sky
It seems that tomorrow may well be our last day of being able to watch the Simpsons Channel, a.k.a Sky One.
For those unaware of this, Telewest, not content with being swallowed up by NTL, have now let NTL get swallowed up by Richard Branson’s ever expanding Virgin empire. Thus we are now, officially, customers of Virgin Media whether we like it or not.
Unfortunately this has coincided with the licence for certain Sky channels on cable coming up for renewal. And Sky, in a stunning example of corporate greed, has apparently decided to double the price it charges. The negotiations have, amusingly, become somewhat bitter with both Virgin and Sky blaming the other, taking out various adverts and trying to whip up the customer base.
The package causing the acrimony appears to contain Sky One, Two and Three (at least the last two of which Chris and I don’t get) and Sky News and Sky Sports News (both of which Chris and I wouldn’t lower ourselves to). So as far as we’re concerned the whole fracas is really about whether we get Sky One or not.
So… we don’t watch Lost or Heroes, Chris keeps missing Battlestar Galactica (which I’m so far behind I can’t be arsed to start on) and, with due consideration, most of the rest of Sky One’s programming is aimed at post-operative brain donors, so bearing all this in mind we’re currently of the opinion that losing this package is not really going to be a great loss.
The only things we will miss are the new Simpsons episodes – which make up less than a fiftieth of the total Simpson’s schedule on Sky – and Project Catwalk (which is proving worryingly compelling but I could probably get on BitTorrent anyway).
So frankly we’re thinking, “Meh. Lose it. It’s fine.”
The trouble is that leaves bugger all on Virgin that we really need either. To be fair my only televisual concerns for the next six months are whether I can get BBC One and BBC Three (soon to be rebranded as the Doctor Who channel) – both of which we could get on Freeview or Homechoice.
So when we finally come to move and look at our new TV and internet packages it looks like Virgin may lose out as well.
Up yours Murdoch and Branson!
Posted on February 27, 2007 | Filed Under My So-Called Life, The World we Live In
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