Today saw the popular Oscars ceremony moved from free terrestrial television to subscription-based Sky television.  This is just another in a long line of transfers that have included football, cricket and many other important events.  Sky are also using their financial muscle to decide which terrestrial channels should be able to show certain programmes.  For example, they bought the multi-channel rights to Star Trek Enterprise and then chose not to offer the terrestrial rights to the BBC at all, effectively ending the BBC's position as the only terrestrial channel for Star Trek.  I'm sure Sky's reasoning was that they wanted to be the only channel that shows all the Star Trek series.

There's general agreement that none of this should be happening, but why is it happening, and what can we do about it?

We live in a free market where everyone sells their events to the highest bidder.  The price they can get will depend on how much we, the viewers, are prepared to pay.  When Sky launched their UK service they managed to persuade a lot of people to take out subscriptions of around £12 per month so they would have a wider range of channels to view, but since all those channels were funded mainly by advertisements they used a lot of the subscription money to outbid terrestrial broadcasters in buying major programmes.  This had the effect of encouraging new viewers to sign up and existing viewers to stay subscribed, so giving Sky even more money to buy more programmes.

Producers of the events have undoubtedly benefited, by getting more money for their events.  But viewers are now increasingly having to pay Sky large amounts of money to see programmes that used to be be free.  And of course Sky now charge even more for multi-channels - nearly £20 per month at present.

If you're happy to go on paying Sky lots of your hard-earned income, these comments won't interest you.  But if, like me, you are concerned about what is happening and want to do something about it, there really is only one solution.  Instead of thinking that Sky have some top programmes so we have to pay Sky to see them, we need to recognise that if we refuse to pay money to Sky they won't be able to buy the programmes next time around.  Only then will those programmes find their way back onto terrestrial television.

I urge everyone to cancel their Sky subscription and make full use of all the free channels available via Satellite and Freeview.  All BBC and other terrestrial channels are available free on satellite right now thanks to the BBCs decision to break away from Sky channel encryption.  The BBC is also being encouraged to set up a free satellite package service to complete with Sky, but you don't have to wait for that to happen.  Cancel Sky now and help make television cheap again.  You'll find that there are plenty of good programmes on terrestrial channels that you missed when you had Sky, and you'll have lots of extra money to buy DVDs of all your favourite films!

We can be encouarged by the recent dramatic slowdown in Sky subscriptions.  Freeview is already having an effect on Sky.  Let's finish the process together.

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55871

Date:

09/05/2006

Time:

13:48:36

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10

Date:

09/05/2006

Time:

15:31:26

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