Sky To Cooperate With Cable Companies

BSkyB is planning to offer a slashed rate cable company ratecard in an attempt to encourage operators to buy more of its premium packages.

Elizabeth Murdoch, managing director of Sky Networks, made the announcement at the European Cable Communications Conference this week. The Office Of Fair Trading is in the process of considering the new rate-card, which Sky hopes will give cable operators increased margins. Murdoch commented: “I hope that the proposed changes in the new rate card are enough to address the fundamental financial issue of cable incentive to sell Sky premium channels.”

Alongside this, the Independent Television Commission (ITC) announced today that it is to revise its approach to assessing concentration of ownership in the cable sector to reflect more accurately cable’s position within the pay-TV market. The concentration of cable ownership will now be measured by assessing cable operators’ connected homes as a proportion of all pay-TV homes.

When, on this basis, a change in ownership would lead to a market share exceeding 25% the ITC will consider whether competition concerns would arise, and if so those concerns would be raised with the Office Of Fair Trading.

Peter Rogers, chief executive at the ITC, said at the same conference this week: “For many years we have defined the market share for each cable operator by comparing the number of homes in that operator’s franchises with the total number of TV households. Recently this has been looking an increasingly unhelpful basis for assessment. For most purposes the market in which we are interested is that for pay-TV. It is the market share for each of the major participants, including cable operators, in that market place which is of particular interest. In future therefore our assessment of the effects of any further changes in the ownership of cable operators will focus on share of the overall pay-TV market.”

BSkyB: 0171 705 3200 Cable Communications Association: 0171 222 2900 ITC: 0171 306 7743