3March
SKY Television has confirmed that its withdrawal from the cable market last Thursday will cost it more than £1 million per week in profits. Prior to cutting the feed, the satellite broadcaster denied supplying a deliberately distorted feed to the national cable centre on Sunday night, pointing out that drop-outs, technical cock-ups, and general uselessness are completely par for the course.
Following the withdrawal of service, NatCable finally changed the channel names to reflect reality, calling them "SKY (Sports) Snooze", a name we've been using for so many years that we'd rather like a month's free sub (though we'll cheerily donate it to the Better Flextech Programmes Fund).
The National Consumer Council, a government-appointed body, has put on its mortar-board and told both Mr. Branson and Mr. Muckdoch to stop behaving like they're in primary one, otherwise it'll be early to bed with no supper for the both of them. It's a shame the NCC couldn't be bothered to intervene in the Telewest v Nickelodeon dispute of 2004-5, which knocked the latter channel off cable for eight weeks and two days. Clearly, the government quango is only interested in matters we couldn't give a flying first about.
In an unrelated move, the DTI has asked OFCOM to investigate SKY's purchase of 17.9% of ITV late last year; it's the first time in five years that the Timidity and Inaction department has investigated an anti-competitive merger like this.
In other broadcasting news, the BBC has agreed not to pursue copyright claims against G****e when the advertising behemoth steals its television programmes. The Beeb will also present some commercials for its future programmes in a computer-readable form. Quite why the Beeb is signing away license-fee payers' interests in this this way is beyond us.
The Greenwich Rugby Time Signal is moving again, this time to become the Anthorn Time Signal. Does that mean that the world will henceforth run on Anthorn Mean Time, just over 9 minutes behind GMT?
And finally, Here's Humph. They had installed one of those lifts where you go in one way and come out the opposite way but they hadn't realised that the opposite way went into a solid brick wall.
