“I agree that people who want to watch live sport should have to pay for it,”

Maybe. But I think this is restrictive and back to front. In my view it makes more sense to frame this as:

“The people who own the rights to sports programming should be able to maximise the return on their investment by selling it to subscribers if they choose”.

My view is that Sky was trying to game it to make them the only feasible digital platform (freeview would still be feasible, but significantly less desirable to most viewers).

By doing an investigation the threat of regulation may be enough to resolve the situation.

I can see what you mean RE the digital platform. It sounds like there is a bunch of gaming going on from both sides.

When analogue goes, I’m not sure what incentive Sky would have to not put Prime on FreeView. Unless they want to just kill FreeView and make sky the only feasible digital platform.

Does Sky pay for the free-to-air channels it screens or do they pay sky or does no money change hands?

the government, (and tvnz & MediaWorks) are concerned about what will happen post 2012 when analogue is switched off. And i’m pretty sure the negotiations were heading toward a major court battle prior to the government’s announcement to investigate.

If there was a substantial leesononing of competition in this market, one would have thought the free-to-air netowrks or the Commerce Commision would have taken Sky to court. The fact that they are taking the public policy route speaks volumes in this regard.

Agree, regulatory creep is something we should avoid; but this doesn’t mean no regulation. it simply means well designed regulation, and only as a last resort. My expectation is that the threat of regulation may be enough to encourage some kind of resolution in the form of an undertaking from freeview & sky.

“The issue appears to be the contention that sky is extending it’s market power in the pay TV market into the free-to-air market.”

Bang-on; thanks for explaining what I couldn’t explain properly.

“2. What market are you referring to? we already have other free-to-air cahnnels so I assumes you mean somthing else. Are you referring to the market for either “dealyed sport” or “live sport”?”

I was refering to the market for free-to-air TV. forget what the content is, that doesn’t matter.

1. Anti-siphoning or divestment seam a pretty simple way to go if you think sky is extending it’s market power into free to air tv, not really sure how sky could game that?

2. What market are you referring to? we already have other free-to-air cahnnels so I assumes you mean somthing else. Are you referring to the market for either “dealyed sport” or “live sport”?

I agree that people who want to watch live sport should have to pay for it, but the question is whether sky is using their position in the pay tv market to stifle the competition in the free-to-air market.

It will be interesting to see what happens if the free-to-air channels push for divestment or anti-siphoning laws.