The BBC has issued a warning to BSkyB that it may begin charging the satellite platform for the retransmission of its channels.
Thursday’s Financial Times quotes John Tate, director of policy and strategy at the BBC, as saying: “This free ride needs to stop”.
The four broadcasters with public service responsibilities, the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 all pay fees to be included within the Electronic Programme Guide. Satellite transmissions would continue regardless, given that the broadcasters also feed the Freesat free-to-air platform.
A spokesman for BSkyB told Broadband TV News: “The BBC directly benefits from the billions of pounds we’ve invested in our TV platform and the technical services that support the 49 channels they run over the Sky platform. These payments are no different to paying for electricity, studio facilities or any other operational costs.”
Sky has been reducing the fees paid by the PSBs, using the lever of adding the catch-up TV services to its platform, and then providing it as a ‘free’ service to anyone who subscribes through the Sky+ HD boxes. This mechanism will take the costs to around £7 million by 2014.
Retransmission fees are high on the priority list of James Purnell, the former Labour culture secretary recently appointed as director of strategy and digital. The BBC has also been conducting a review that may lead to some satellite feeds, such as the 15-minute a day Cambridge opt-out, being dropped.
