Quote:
Originally Posted by Chad
The dispute is not over yet.
SKY UK CEO Stephen van Rooyen:
"The deal has been concluded on the right terms after Discovery accpeted the proposal we gave them over a week ago."
Discovery have responded:
"The deal we reached with SKY is meaningfully better than our former agreement and their proposal. Furthermore, our new arrangement enables us to control our destiny in more ways, with even more opportunities to invest and launch channels and consumer services. Stay tuned in the coming weeks."
Read into that what you will. Got the feeling Discovery are planning their own streaming service. One thing for sure SKY where more than prepared to let the Disovery Network channels go. SKY also confirmed earlier today a deal with PBS America to offer “the best of PBS’ factual programming.” SKY also confirmed they are to add more than 1,000 hours of on-demand programming from nonfiction channels including History and National Geographic.
I'm happy with the outcome. Discovery Network channels continue plus even more factual on demand content than ever before.
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The deal settled upon appears to involve Sky paying the lower carriage costs that they wanted, but with some other tweaks eg Sky taking back the TLC slot and putting Pick on there and more freedom for Discovery to run their business as they see fit.
Apparently, Pick is moving to 125, Challenge to 152 and TLC to 145.
Both parties are claiming victory, so I suspect, to reflect the fact that Discovery are being paid less than what they wanted, Sky have agreed to allow Discovery to have the increased control and flexibility that has been mentioned.
I suspect that this involves allowing them to make some of their channels FTA and have a suspicion that this is how UKTV managed to get Really, Drama and Yesterday onto Freesat and Home onto Freeview.
As part of their contingency plans, Sky threw some money at PBS America to make some documentary programmes, which Sky, Freesat and Virgin Media customers will all be able to enjoy
