Virgin Media has denied that its backed out of a new agreement with UKTV.
At the weekend UKTV said that it had held talks with the cablenet, but had failed to transfer them to paper.
UKTV channels including Dave, Gold, Alibi and Drama have been missing since July 21st after the two parties failed to reach a fresh carriage agreement.
“After holding talks to create a resolution for our viewers, Virgin Media backed out of a new deal we verbally agreed yesterday. Sadly, we can’t, at the current time, see an end date for an agreement to be reached that pays UKTV a fair price for our ongoing services to their business,” UKTV said in a statement.
A Virgin Media spokesperson denied the talks were at an end: “We have held constructive talks with UKTV and plan to continue these discussions. We won’t negotiate in public and our door remains open.”
The broadcaster says while its tried to be as helpful as possible to its audience it is advising customers who have concerns with their television service contact their provider in the first instance.”
A number of UKTV’s channels, including Dave, are available free-to-air. It’s understood that Virgin would be willing to restore these while talks on the pay channels continue.
Key to Virgin is access to BBC content sold to on demand services including Netflix and Amazon by UKTV co-owner BBC Worldwide.
