Another Blow Dealt To James Murdoch…

COMMENTS (2)

• Hi,

  It was a spoiling tactic.

  The Former NTL Cable, now called Virgin Media, which essentially covers most of the UK exclusively, future-proof, VoD, IPTV and 200mb Broadband-ready was negotiating with ITV, the UK’s leading commercial network, which was facing its own weaknesses at the time, for a full equal merger encompassing cable nets, sister fta networks, massive multi-content library and original production and formats.

  It would have been the genesis of a company that would actually have comprehensively challenged the vertical integration of News Corp., and so little Murdoch Jr, pounced, using his BskyB shareholders money to buy shares at what was even known then to be over-paying at the top of the market, and the share-price of ITV until recent months had just been in permanent decline.

  This purchase was done in 2007, and they’ve used every single avenue to appeal every single regulation and court decision to delay the obvious. BskyB is the exclusive premium/pay-tv content provider in the UK, to call it dominant would be an understatement, VM and ITV merging would actually have provided a real threat (/competition), which BskyB/Murdoch have always been against to the point of paying hackers to crack competitors encryption systems, to be broken and enabling piracy.

  References:

  href=”http://tr.im/bskybtactics2″ title=”NDS”
  href=”http://tr.im/bskybtactics” title=”BskyB”

  Yours kindly,

  Shakir Razak

  Comment by Shakir Razak — Thursday January 21, 2010 @ 7:13pm PST  Reply to this post

• Hi,

  Also, just to add further, There’s an election due in the UK, in the next 5 months.

  The conservative party (right wing) have promised to dismantle the media regulator, free the broadcasting market to how America has and attacked the BBC to re-trench, and this was done soon after the largest tabloid in the land, coincidentally owned by one News Corp./R. Murdoch, declared its support/endorsement for, um, The Conservative Party.

  
  

  http://tr.im/bskybtactics2
  http://tr.im/bskybtactics

  Depending on the next stage of the process, BskyB can stretch the process out upto another 2 years almost (i.e. enough time for both markets and laws to be changed).

  Kind regards,

  Shakir Razak

  Comment by Shakir Razak — Thursday January 21, 2010 @ 7:24pm PST  Reply to this post