Tag: Sky
-
Watching HD TV
At home, I have two ways to watch broadcast HD television. I can either watch via Freeview or Sky HD (Strictly speaking, my TV also has Freesat built in, but I’ve never enabled it). In a Freeview world, should I chose to watch one of the biggest channels: BBC1, BBC2, ITV, C4 or C5 I…
-
The £5 Billion League
You know how this is supposed to be austerity Britain? Well you wouldn’t know that looking at the sums announced earlier today as the conclusion of the next three years’ of live Premier League coverage were concluded. The total cost of the rights was £5.136 billion for the seasons 2016/17 to 2018/19. Sky has retained…
-
The Open Goes to Sky
As has been widely anticipated in the press, today saw news that Sky Sports has won a five-year contract beginning in 2017 to broadcast The Open golf tournament exclusively live. The BBC will have a two hour 8pm-10pm highlights package. Sky is said to be paying twice as much as the BBC, and they will…
-
What I Watched, Listened To and Read Over Christmas
You may or may not have enjoyed my Radio Times suggestions. I didn’t always follow them myself. But in the spirit of honesty, this is what I did watch over Christmas: The final two episodes of Cabin Pressure were recorded back in February, but only reached the airwaves over Christmas with the story being essentially…
-
Selling Your Sport Short
There’s an interesting piece in yesterday’s Guardian hypothesising that by selling itself nearly completely to pay-TV players, rugby union could be very short sighted and diminish the appeal of the sport. Regular readers of this blog will know that I think the English Cricket Board has done precisely that, and we’re ending up with a…
-
Possible Sale of Channel 5
In recent days it has been fairly widely reported that Richard Desmond, owner of Channel 5, Express Newspapers and other more “specialist” TV services, is looking to sell Channel 5. Desmond bought Channel 5 for a knockdown price of £103.5m in 2008, and he’s run it pretty shrewdly, keeping costs down and turning a profit.…
-
Ashes Highlights This Winter
Returning to a familiar topic, I note that there are no Ashes highlights on Channel 5 this winter. Instead they’ll be broadcast on Pick TV – Sky’s free-to-air channel available on most platforms including Freeview. They’ll be broadcast nightly at 10pm, just before play begins the following day. Live coveragewill of course be on Sky…
-
BT and Champions’ League Football
I must admit that like many others, I was surprised to learn over the weekend that BT had bought all the Champions’ League live TV rights exlcusively. At a stroke they’ve knocked both ITV and Sky out of the picture starting from the 2015 season. I’m going to try to unpick the subject a bit…