The squabble between BSkyB and Virgin Media - aka NTL/Telewest
- is entertaining, even if one suspects it comes near the end of an era
where owning big distribution pipes (as both companies do) is in
fashion. Sky wants Virgin to pay it more to carry Sky programming.
Virgin says the Sky content isn’t worth more. Sky pulls the plug, and
tells Virgin customers to fit a dish to keep seeing their favourite shows. PRs and lawyers get rich, while users lose out.

Believe the TV 2.0 orthodoxy, however, and all this will look very old fashioned quite soon. A network’s ability to
aggregate an audience starts to matter less in a world where TV
delivery over the internet, in to personal video players at the user’s end, liberates the audience from caring about network provider or schedule.

Then,
the only thing that matters is the owner of the content, and their
policy towards selling it to you. If they’re not up for selling their new hit show to you,
because they’re trying an old network-exclusive ploy (”only available on Sky One!”), you’ll just nick
it for free [download here]. Only televisual "events" - created and owned by a network
and of greatest value when viewed live (think: Premiership football)
will be an effective lock-in in this new age.

For pre-recorded
stuff, you’d imagine that most content makers - often not the network
actually broadcasting the shows - might soon start thinking that
cutting out a large bit of the downstream value chain, by selling
direct from studio to consumer, looks like a fun idea.

It’ll suck to be a network then, that’s for sure.

Content production’s not going to be all a bed of roses; marketing costs will go up, as the audience fragments and it becomes harder to pull the kind of big crowd that big productions need. And the rise of user-generated information and entertainment, and the barriers to entry to new pro-level rivals, will mean the market gets more crowded.

But, on the plus side, producers will free of the tyranny of schedules and chickenshit commissioning editors. Content will be sold direct to the viewer by the producer, by the episode, or the series (rather than by the bundle). Margins on content should rise.

Meanwhile, competition for content delivery will be based on one thing; price of connection. Margins, for networks without significant content, will fall; it’s hard to differentiate a pipe.

In today’s world, the ongoing squabble shows just how ripe the current system is for revolution. The Sunday Telegraph reckons Virgin has scored an early victory in its "battle" with BSkyB because "just" 100 customers a day have been cancelling
subscriptions since Sky One, and other channels, were withdrawn from
the cable service on Wednesday night. The uncharitable, or those
actually familiar with the old NTL’s customer service*,
might speculate that those were only the 300 or so people who - so far
- have managed to navigate the hell that is a cable call centre in order to do the deed.

More must have made it through, though. Telebusillis
joins the press coverage dots and thinks Virgin must be handing around
2,000 package discounts a day, as bribes to dissuade others from
quitting cable. Finally, there are heavy discounts on Virgin services
now, aimed at those not yet trying to move. This must be costing Virgin
quite a lot.

And things might get worse. More Virgin subscribers, you’d imagine, might be reaching for the telephone around 9pm when they realise they can’t get Sky for tonight’s fix of 24.

I’m
tempted to think the whole thing a reminder of cable’s appalling
disregard for its users. Between mature businesses there is, surely, no
way that consumers should have to care - even know - about matters like
carriage arrangements. Virgin is clearly playing this game for PR
value. Sky is happy to play along and watch the debt-saddled rival’s
customers come across to satellite, while also ensuring its satellite
business becomes better differentiated against cable’s.

The only people who lose out are the users, again inconvenienced by pisspoor cable, and wondering how they’ll catch up on the episodes of Gallactica, 24 and the rest - even if they sign up with Murdoch. It’s maybe hard to be a network, but their weary customers may be feeling they deserve all they get.

* Me? I’m with Sky, and would never consider cable again after years of frustration with NTL. I hate call queues.

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