Thursday 1 April 2010

Spot the deliberate April fool.

As you might have expected, the Sun is outraged by yesterday's decision that Sky must reduce the price at which it sells its sports channels to rival broadcasters:

THE beauty of competition is that YOU decide what to watch on your telly.

Unlike the BBC, no one is forced to pay for Sky TV, part of the company that owns The Sun.

But Labour have decided Sky must hand over its content cheaply to rivals who have never taken Sky's risks to revolutionise TV sport.

Nor made the massive investment that won Sky rights to events like the Premier League and Test cricket.

Sky pays around £1billion a year to UK sports. That will be hit if the firm has to take less for its content.

Labour the party of business? A ragbag of meddling Lefties, more like.


Did you spot the deliberate mistake? No, not that Sky has ever revolutionised anything, but rather the paper's strange decision to blame the Labour party rather than err, Ofcom, the media regulator which actually made the decision. It's doubly strange as the paper's actual report correctly identifies Ofcom as the body behind the ruling.

Undoubtedly this is simply another of the paper's April fools, of which there were a further four, as surely the paper's leader writers wouldn't deliberately blame the government for something that has absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. If they had, then the Press Complaints Commission would surely take a dim view of such an egregious lie, coming as it does only days before the election campaign is officially launched. Clearly, the Sun would never try to mislead voters into believing that Labour is threatening their beloved sports on satellite; now that really would be a scandalous, unfounded and certainly libellous allegation.

2 comments:

Alex said...

"Unlike the BBC, no one is forced to pay for Sky TV, part of the company that owns The Sun. But Labour have decided Sky must hand over its content cheaply to rivals who have never taken Sky's risks to revolutionise TV sport."
Interesting sleight of hand here. Starts off with a dig at the BBC, then inexplicably switches to laying into Labour. It's almost as if it expects Sun readers to take for granted that they're in league with each other.

Anonymous said...

I have to hold my hands up and say I'm actually on Sky's side here (not on the side of inaccurate reporting though, obviously).

They did take a major risk, and invested hugely in sport in the early nineties, and have reaped the benefits - as have the sports involved, such as the two rugby codes.

I hate the fact that I can't have live sport on tap in my home, but I am not prepared to pay Sky's price for it. That is their prerogative to set such prices and my own to not pay.

Now they have to sell up because the first attempt to make the sports broadcasting arena more competitive was a complete failure. It was a good idea divvying up the rights to live Premier League rights, but then allowing Sky 4 out of 5 matches, including the first choice of the weekend, was idiotic.

I get the impression Ofcom is embarrassed by how badly they failed with that and are trying to sting Sky again.

And to be fair to the Sun, they did mention the fact that they have a vested interest in the story - something they have been shy of disclaiming previously.