Virgin Media(ex-Telewest/NTL) Pulls plug on Sky News, Sky One etc

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It's gone. The plug was pulled at midnight.
Virgin Media won't be refunding any money. Sky are losing £20m apparently so that's extra profit for Virgin Media due to no refunds.
Sky News is the only decent 24 hour news channel. No way am i watching that BBc 24 crap.
And no more Simpsons either because sky one is gone. All the basic sky channels are gone now. Only the subscription ones remain.

FUCK YOU BRANSON

The Story

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:06 (seventeen years ago) link

no more skysports news :(

― Porkpie, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:09 (seventeen years ago) link

It looks like this is ultimately going to effect Freeview too judging by the article I saw on the cover of Broadcast the other day; Sky going with their own subscription-only DTT package (requiring new hardware) and so removing Sky Three, Sky News and Sky Sports News from free-to-air.

― Michael Jones, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:12 (seventeen years ago) link

wow this is major. luckily i have Homechoice who were presumably not able to pay Sky to include their major channels on their service.

fuck Sky tho. greedy bullies by the sound of it.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Is it just people with the basic package (ie not me) who lose the good stuff then, or everyone? That story doesn't make it clear

― DJ Mencap, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:15 (seventeen years ago) link

Everyone's losing it - we pay for all the channels except movies and sports. Sky have been plugging it for weeks in a "come to us, we're cheaper and better and you can watch our telly" things. Branson's going to lose big style over this. I'd been holding out when I thought Virgin might resolve issues at the last minute to not lose thousands of customers, but we're switching when we get back off our holidays.

― ailsa, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:31 (seventeen years ago) link

no more skysports news :(

yeah, it's the loss of Jeff Stelling that's bothering me most. I have teh interwebs for the other stuff.

― ailsa, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:34 (seventeen years ago) link

We have sports and movies and have lost these channels. It may be Sky being greedy, but the £20m they pay Sky isn't being paid back to the customers via refunds.

If it wasn't for the fact we have the whole internet and phone package my dad would probably scrap it. But i think MANY will move to Sky.
If they then fuck around with the internet service then we're definitely off.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:39 (seventeen years ago) link

You do know you can keep your internet and phone package with them and just move your TV service to Sky, yes?

― ailsa, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:41 (seventeen years ago) link

What the fuck happened to this country's telly where Sky is actually compelling enough to switch to for their channels? Fuck, it used to be the Simpsons and all the other US channels you got Sky for, not Sky 3 or whatever bullshit.

Also: it feels like every time I fire up the fuzzy-ass portable in the kitchen there's nowt on analogue telly apart from rancid call-in-to-WIN shows where people apparently just "fill" for hours. Fuck a UK tv in the ass.

― .stet., Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:46 (seventeen years ago) link

You can get way cheaper internets other places anyway, also phone lines. I've been investigating and this is pretty much giving us the kick up the arse to do it. hurrah for Richard Branson and his "stand" against Sky.

(also, Kerr, you can use your Virgin internets to obtain the Simpsons without giving any money to Sky.)

― ailsa, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:48 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm only doing it for money-saving purposes and Jeff Stelling. Sky One and whatever won't really be missed at all.

― ailsa, Thursday, 1 March 2007 00:50 (seventeen years ago) link

I mean, I watch several non-terrestrial channels, but don't see the point of remaining with one provider that charges you as much money for less product - if someone's getting my money, it's as well being Sky as Virgin, as the choice is slightly wider.

I realise the advertising income these days gets split further across more channels, and that it means more revenue-pulling TV (not just quiz channels, but phone-voting for everything, stupid between-show quizzes, that sort of thing), but I can still find enough throughout what's there to justify my licence fee + cable subscription. I think TV's changed too much to hope that people will stop demanding more channels for less money and that it'll go back to some halcyon mythical time where we have only a select few channels and everything on telly was brilliant.

― ailsa, Thursday, 1 March 2007 01:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I thought it was the other way round, and Sky pulled their channels from Virgin? Either way I can see why they did this - if I were the person who cared enough to pay for telly I'd switch immediately for the football and films alone.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 09:26 (seventeen years ago) link

it's pretty hilarious

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 09:32 (seventeen years ago) link

I honestly can't see Virgin as being the main bad guys in this affair.
As far as I can tell Virgin objected to being asked to pay a minimum of double their current amount for these 'basic sky channels' and then Sky demanded that Sky One be removed from the Virgin basic channel package.
It's not terribly good customer service of Virgin to not compensate their users for loss of high profile channels, but equally Sky are attempting to hold Virgin to ransom for channels with falling viewing figures and at the same time telling Virgin how to run their business model so that Sky's basic options become better value.
It seems obvious to me that this is just part of Sky's attempt to prevent cable becoming a serious competitor now that it's dominated by a single large company. See Sky's refusal to sell their HD channels to Virgin, refusal to allow cable viewers access to the red button features of Sky Sports, etc. And you know that this situation is going to lead to Virgin losing hundreds if not thousands of customers...

I'm pretty annoyed by the loss of Sky One (the other channels are currently on Freeview) but I honestly can't see it being off cable forever and frankly 100% of the content I watch the channel for is available on the net if I was really that concerned about being completely up to date and 100% will be available on DVD sooner or later.

This is not blind fanboy support for Virgin, they've got enough faults of their own, with stupidly high broadband prices, the slowest epg in the world, etc. and I can see that for lots of people Sky or Freeview are better options. However castigating the company because they've refused to accept a bad deal from Sky seems more than a little short sighted. If Sky can charge cable double for these channels, how much are they going to charge for their premium services when it comes time to negotiate those deals? If Virgin are seen to be easy to hold to ransom then how much are they going to have to charge the end customer to provide their TV services?

Anyway, this whole thing means I'll spend less time watching re-runs of Simpsons episodes and finally getting round to watching some of the stuff I've got recorded on the PVR.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 09:37 (seventeen years ago) link

Sky claimed their price-rise was 'justified' but I have not seen an independent body confirm this yet. Until then Virgin have my support. I would love something like Sky Plus but I've got used to life without that.

I don't know of any essential TV shows on Sky channels - but then I download more and more ad-free TV shows. For people who still enjoy The Simpsons, how far behind are Channel 4 in showing new episodes anyway?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 09:57 (seventeen years ago) link

A good few series? Though they haven't shown any new ones for a few weeks.

The messages on the ditched channels right now are pretty fucking childish. If they had smarts they'd have just got Richard Branson to reprise the bit from The Simpsons where Mr Burns takes over TV in an attempt to get Bobo back. I think people would dig that

― DJ Mencap, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:04 (seventeen years ago) link

or just a screen grab of billionaire tyrant Murdoch with added horns and flames around him, crying children below

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:07 (seventeen years ago) link

Channel 4 are four years/series behind Sky One with new eps. of The Simpsons.

I don't know of any essential TV shows on Sky channels

"Essential" is, of course, debatable, but Sky One also has:

Lost
24
Battlestar Galactica
Weeds
Nip/Tuck
The 4400
Bones
Rescue Me
and the commissioned stuff, like "Hogfather"

― Ben Boyerrr, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:28 (seventeen years ago) link

all those shows being American, of course.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:37 (seventeen years ago) link

isn't it something like: branson wanted to have a controlling share in itv and murdoch blocked him and branson told everyone that it was bad how much power murdoch had and that the government should stop him and murdoch priced branson out of including his channels?

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:42 (seventeen years ago) link

As of now, all of Sky One's Brit shows are "reality" (e.g. Brainiac, Crash Test Dummies, Cirque de Celebrite, The Match, Project Catwalk, etc.) except for "Dream Team." "Hex" was their biggest commission but didn't rate outside of a devoted cult.
Sky One is fundamentally acquistions-based.

― Ben Boyerrr, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:43 (seventeen years ago) link

pretty much. it's a rich powerful man standing up to and trying to compete with an even richer, more powerful man. lesser of two evils thing really.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:44 (seventeen years ago) link

Of course Sky have gambled on British comedy in the past (Time Gentlemen Please, Jumpers For Goalposts, that Harry Enfield thing)...hmm, no wonder they gave up.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:45 (seventeen years ago) link

don't think anyone can really blame murdoch, then, and no-one can think branson wasn't being foolish

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:45 (seventeen years ago) link

Branson is trying to compete directly with Sky, why on earth would Murdoch even consider giving him a leg up?

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:48 (seventeen years ago) link

We get free Sky! Everyone round to mine to screw Murdoch!

― tissp, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:51 (seventeen years ago) link

pretty much. it's a rich powerful man standing up to and trying to compete with an even richer, more powerful man. lesser of two evils thing really.

Innit, Virgin seem to be under the misconception that I give a fuck which multinational corporation I hitch my tiny wagon to for the purposes of making my life marginally less depressing

― DJ Mencap, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:52 (seventeen years ago) link

Why should Sky be allowed to increase their fee for other companies to include their channels?

In the interests of fair competition perhaps this should not have been permitted by whoever handles these things (Oftel types).

Oftel ordered BT to allow other companies to compete with them fairly by making them charge less for use of their network. Someone should be making sure the same is done with Sky. Sky have already lost ground on their monopoly of live football coverage at least.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 10:56 (seventeen years ago) link

Haven't Sky already been slapped for the reverse--i.e. told that they had to carry ITV's channels?

― tissp, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:01 (seventeen years ago) link

sky channels can't really be compared to bt's network

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:01 (seventeen years ago) link

the point is that like BT they have the most power

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:03 (seventeen years ago) link

because people want to watch their channels?

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:04 (seventeen years ago) link

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Isn't the stuff about Branson a bit of a red herring?
NTL bought Virgin mobile and off the back of that the rights to call themselves Virgin Media rather than NTL. They probably thought the name change would do them good since NTL had a horrendous reputation for customer service.
I'm sure that Branson has a share in the new company but I'm also pretty sure that he has pretty little to do with the day to day running of it.

Sky's recent announcements regarding their freeview channels should tell you everything you need to know about the way they do business.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:06 (seventeen years ago) link

no?

― RJG, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:06 (seventeen years ago) link

Steve I think the amount Sky were charging Virgin is a red herring here - Sky weren't going to let Virgin carry their channels whatever happened and hiking up the price makes it look like Virgin's fault.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:07 (seventeen years ago) link

NTL was Branson's plan B after failing to get ITV. Sky sort of 'forced' him to compete directly with them by outbidding him on ITV? Jolly clever of them I suppose.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:08 (seventeen years ago) link

(Branson is the largest single shareholder in the new Virgin Media fwiw)

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:08 (seventeen years ago) link

This is all a bit like Man Utd getting huffy with Chelsea for having too much money.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Sky have already lost ground on their monopoly of live football coverage at least.

That will be where 3 channels now carry it, forcing people to pay 3 seperate fees, which of course will end up being more than the £50 season ticket we get just now?

Cheers for that.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:12 (seventeen years ago) link

I don't know how you can all stand it, tbh. "jump through this hoop. Now this one." etc

― Pashmina, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:18 (seventeen years ago) link

At the end of the day, football's the winner.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:18 (seventeen years ago) link

Sky weren't going to let Virgin carry their channels whatever happened and hiking up the price makes it look like Virgin's fault.

maybe so. but then perhaps Branson is just playing them at their own game by forcing things in this way. if it means another company has more chance to operate and compete at Sky's level then surely that's a good thing in the long-term. obv. it's a massive gamble in short-term because people will switch to Sky for the American imports. i don't know how Branson's planning to deal with that but it's a bit exciting at least.

RJG it's not as simple as that. expanding on things beyond one sentence...why do people want to watch Sky stuff? because they have far more power than their 'rivals' and can throw cash to get what they want, and they'll pay more for all those desirable US imports. but surely there's a line to cross before this becomes an unfair advantage or in some respects a monopoly.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:19 (seventeen years ago) link

I find it hard to believe Ofcom will go along with the idea of having two distinct and competing pay-for-DTT offerings possibly requiring different boxes (Freeview+TopUpTV vs. whatever Sky wants to cook up).

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:23 (seventeen years ago) link

well DTT is available through Homechoice box as well as Freeview, Virgin/NTL and Sky Digital/Plus no? plus (unsupported) Tivo?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Wait ha sorry. I thought DTT just meant digital terrestrial television, which is what I thought Freeview was.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:27 (seventeen years ago) link

[Removed Illegal Image]

But rightly or wrongly this is pretty much how it works in every single industry in the world!

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:30 (seventeen years ago) link

sorry yes, Freeview are the only ones actually supplying it as DTT. The others use cable or satellite to carry those same traditional terrestrial/otherwise analogue channels.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 11:31 (seventeen years ago) link

Skipping 24 messages at this point... Click here if you want to load them all.

Homechoice has it's own 'channels' except really they're just rolling ads for their interactive services i.e. video on demand. Still counts as content tho.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:22 (seventeen years ago) link

What Virgin really need to do is quit whining and buy up some TV channels quickly. Or hope that OFCOM split Sky into content and distribution.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:25 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh actually, Virgin owns what used to be Flextech and runs Bravo etc, right? So technically they could pull that content from Sky and will probably do so as soon as they're legally allowed. Not sure whether or not that would convince many consumers not to switch to Sky, mind.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:28 (seventeen years ago) link

Bravo has Heroes (though downlooters are 15 episodes ahead).

― onimo, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:29 (seventeen years ago) link

I think BBC Worldwide still owns some of Flextech and it would not be a spat that they could get involved in.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:32 (seventeen years ago) link

But virgin media do generate their own content, at least in part - the uktv channels are owned by a joint venture of the bbc and telewest who were merged with ntl and in turn virgin media.

― leigh, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:39 (seventeen years ago) link

oops x-post

― leigh, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:42 (seventeen years ago) link

x-post But isn't Heroes going to be on BBC2 in a few months?

― Guilty_Boksen, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:48 (seventeen years ago) link

Presumably because a) Bravo is part-owned by BBC Worldwide, and b) Heroes will have been over on Bravo for ages by then.

― Matt DC, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:49 (seventeen years ago) link

x-post But isn't Heroes going to be on BBC2 in a few months?

Yay, you can be even further behind for free (+ licence fee).

― onimo, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:49 (seventeen years ago) link

can't virgin whatsit just get their own american tv shows?

― ken c, Thursday, 1 March 2007 12:59 (seventeen years ago) link

they might be able to outbid Sky for some of them soon.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah they'll probably bid higher for L O S T just as Sawyer jumps Old Toothy.

― onimo, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:06 (seventeen years ago) link

or, instead of this bidding thing, offer everyone who subscribe to virgin whatsit a really big fat broadband connection, plus a thing on your computer that can play mpeg videos into your virgin cable box as a channel.

i have NO IDEA what customers would do with such a set up, but just a thought.

― ken c, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:08 (seventeen years ago) link

I'm not really bothered about being able to watch downloaded video on my TV for the mo. I can hook my laptop up to it if I really want to and that'll do until downloading directly onto TV really takes off.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:19 (seventeen years ago) link

For those who've been with virgin/ntl/telewest for over a year i'd strongly recommend calling their retentions dept (not customers services) say your thinking of switching to sky and see if they'll make you a deal. With very little haggling they doubled my broadband speed and upgraded TV & phone package for no extra cost.

― Jack Half-a-Prayer, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:48 (seventeen years ago) link

OK what is current cost of Virg/NTL 8 MEG broadband?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:49 (seventeen years ago) link

They don't do 8Mb, it's 2, 4 or 10Mb at the minute.
10Mb is £35 a month.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:52 (seventeen years ago) link

oh right. i've got 8mb with Homechoice for around £18-20 (can't remember exact price because it's bundled with TV package which is about the same)

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:54 (seventeen years ago) link

More details from digital spy about successful renegotiated packages:

Virgin Retentions Deals

― Jack Half-a-Prayer, Thursday, 1 March 2007 13:56 (seventeen years ago) link

ok, someone talk to me about getting a dbox? pros and cons? i'm in ireland, ntl customer

― darraghmac, Thursday, 1 March 2007 14:10 (seventeen years ago) link

haha do those guys know they've all been ripped off? i pay like £25 a month and get sky sports?

― ken c, Thursday, 1 March 2007 14:11 (seventeen years ago) link

ok, someone talk to me about getting a dbox? pros and cons? i'm in ireland, ntl customer

I don't know what a dbox is, but by now I've been a customer of Chorus (utter rubbish unless you really don't care about telly and just want cheap), NTL Digital (not bad but not available where I live) and Sky (OHMYGOD I love my Sky Plus box so very, very much). Sky's absolute biggest drawback, to me, here in Ireland, is that it only offers the digital BBC channels on its Extra Services menu, and you can't record them and they're not included in the programme guide. Annoying.

― accentmonkey, Thursday, 1 March 2007 15:28 (seventeen years ago) link

DTT providers:
* Freeview (Free).
* Top Up TV Anytime (Pay Monthly).
* Setanta Sports (Pay Monthly) (Stand alone service - will be able to show live Premiership games along with Sky).
* A new service from BSkyB (To Be Confirmed).

Presumably you can't have more than one of these.

Why are BBC bothering with this FreeSat thing then?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 15:54 (seventeen years ago) link

You can have freeview, top up tv and setanta all at the same time if you have a freeview box that accepts cards.
To get the new Sky service you'll need a new set top box that can handle the compression format that Sky plan to use.
Unless OFCOM tell them not to, of course.

― treefell, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:11 (seventeen years ago) link

i'm fed up with the whole lot of them.

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link

the problem with topupTV is that it gets you approx. = jack shit, and there's like 4 boxes in the whole world that accept the card. i have no idea why anyone would need more than freeview, which is... free! that said i care approx. = 0 about european sports, and even less about "quality" US dramas (except for the Wire)

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:27 (seventeen years ago) link

I have free sat, because the quality from the dish on the pub is better than the broken aerial from the roof. Currently, for me, freesat consists of every channel on the sky platform.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:33 (seventeen years ago) link

also sat box and hookup to the dish were free.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:40 (seventeen years ago) link

are you saying you've haxx0red the pub's sky tv?

― blueski, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:41 (seventeen years ago) link

i used to rent from a guy who had some kind of weird descrambled german satellite hookup - it could receive signals from like 20 different satellites (with names like... firebird?); i got al-jazeera which i was very excited about until i realized i couldn't understand a word of it. i also got "iraq TV" which was just color bars :( .. also oman tv, loads of others, including BBC World, which is such a vast improvement over News 24 it's not even funny. most of the channels were in german, though, which was pretty unhelpful.

― Tracer Hand, Thursday, 1 March 2007 16:56 (seventeen years ago) link

I am completely separate from the pub's sky apart from the feed from their LNB. I came home one sunday and suddenly every channel worked.

― Ed, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:03 (seventeen years ago) link

I came home one sunday and suddenly every channel worked m'lud.

― CarsmileSteve, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:13 (seventeen years ago) link

Ha ha, we had that problem with NTL once. The cable service in our apartment had been left on by the previous tenants, and we spent two days on the phone with NTL trying to convince them that it was on, and that we would like to upgrade it to digital. They just kept saying "we can't upgrade you, we have no record of your account".

We lived there for a year without paying a cable bill. Nice.

― accentmonkey, Thursday, 1 March 2007 17:51 (seventeen years ago) link

two months pass...

Virgin Media has confirmed that it will rollout a traffic management system designed to reduce the downstream speed of customers who download lots of data during peak hours.

The cableco defines peak as between 4pm and midnight, and claimed that only the top 5% of downloaders on each speed tier would be affected. Customers on tier M who download over 350MB during peak will have their downstream speed reduced to 1Mbps and their upstream restricted to 128Kbps for four hours. Customers on tier L who download over 750MB during peak will have their downstream reduced to 2Mbps and their upstream restricted to 192Kbps. Customers on Virgin's flagship XL service who download over 3GB during peak will be restricted to 5Mbps down/256Kbps up.

The traffic management system is being implemented at the same time as 20Mbps downstream services are being rolled out to XL tier subscribers.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 5 May 2007 21:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Time to shop around I think for a new ISP. Branson can just fuck right off.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 5 May 2007 21:43 (seventeen years ago) link

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=75

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:27 (sixteen years ago) link

That will be where 3 channels now carry it, forcing people to pay 3 seperate fees, which of course will end up being more than the £50 season ticket we get just now?

If you have to pay three fees, does that mean you have three boxes for programming, like if I had to have a Dish box, DirecTV and cable?

Or is there one universal box that translates all incoming programs and subscriptions?

― milo z, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:33 (sixteen years ago) link

If you have Virgin Media you can get it all through that. But you have to pay over Â£120 to Setanta for a years subscription. Then whatever you pay for Sky Sports on top.

Since it was Â£50 for a season ticket for Sky you're now going to have to pay an extra Â£70 to get the same amount of matches.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:48 (sixteen years ago) link

Of course I think you get the SPL games with that. So erm yeah that makes it all worthwhile doesn't it?

You're quids in if you're an old firm fan I suppose.

― Brigadier Lethbridge-Pfunkboy, Saturday, 19 May 2007 17:49 (sixteen years ago) link

one year passes...

And tomorrow all sky channels we lost are back again.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:20 (fifteen years ago) link

why do you love sky news?

― conrad, Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:24 (fifteen years ago) link

Because it's the best news station. And unlike anything else owned by fox it's unbiased politically.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:36 (fifteen years ago) link

and BBC 24 is dull shit

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Wednesday, 12 November 2008 22:37 (fifteen years ago) link

haha I forgot to watch the Simpsons. Oh well I will see it tomorrow.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Thursday, 13 November 2008 23:44 (fifteen years ago) link

I already own tonight's episodes on DVD! boo. But last night I saw Treehouse of Horror XIX, which was a directionless mess that didn't remotely resemble any era of The Simpsons I know (and it hasn't been that long since I was occasionally seeing new episodes, only a couple of years).

Sky Arts, which I've never seen before, looks like it could satisfy some of my BBC 4ish middle brow hankerings. But overall I don't think these new channels at my disposal does too much for me trying to find something to watch at 4am.

― Merdeyeux, Friday, 14 November 2008 20:17 (fifteen years ago) link

Yeah, I have seen all of the ones shown tonight. Bloody typical!!

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 14 November 2008 20:22 (fifteen years ago) link

As for 4am watching, you cant even watch UK Gold then now. The couldve put old dr whos or something on then. Booo.

― Pfunkboy Formerly Known As... (Herman G. Neuname), Friday, 14 November 2008 20:23 (fifteen years ago) link

six months pass...

I don't know if this is of any use to anyone, but Virgin Media currently have a deal where if you sign up and pick their "XL" TV package you can get a V+ (like Sky+ only for Virgin) for only £50 rather than the usual £100; and when I spoke to them today they eventually admitted that if I wanted to I could cancel the XL package and go back down to "L" without any recourse, thus instantly saving me £50 and not being saddled with paying more for a bunch of shitty channels I don't care about. Dude seemed genuinely amazed that nobody had mentioned it before...

― Background Zombie (CharlieNo4), Wednesday, 20 May 2009 17:01 (fourteen years ago) link

one year passes...

so it goes...

BSkyB buys Virgin Media TV channels in £160m deal
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/10238515.stm

― mdskltr (blueski), Friday, 4 June 2010 16:48 (thirteen years ago) link

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