Quote:
Originally Posted by OLD BOY
So Virgin simply get the feed from elsewhere and ITV can refer VM to Ofcom. Now that will be interesting!
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I don't know why VM would take the trouble to get a feed from elsewhere. I suppose that VM customers could then complain to Ofcom about VM failing to meet its PSB "must carry" obligations if it doesn't take another feed but the responsibility for lack of carriage would surely be ITV's.
If ITV cut the feed they are in breach of the "must offer" obligation and they could be referred to Ofcom and to the DCMS. Possibly putting ITV in breach of their PSB licence.
The problem is that the change in legislation, theoretically allowing ITV to introduce a retransmission fee, hasn't modified the PSB "must carry" or "must offer" obligations.
ITV want an additional revenue stream from pay-tv providers, without offsetting that with any costs of carriage, not very realistic. They complain that they are losing revenue as pay-tv customers skip the ads on their PVRs, which ignores the fact than not every pay-tv customer has a PVR. It also ignores the fact that PVRs are also available on other platforms, so why only impose a charge on "pay-tv" customers?
Personally, if I record anything from ITV, I use a Freeview PVR, saving disk space on the Tivo for content not available elsewhere. I certainly don't want to pay additional fees simply because the ITV PSB channel happens to also be duplicated on VM.