Wonder why Tour Down Under went to Bike Channel ?
I missed it all because it wasn't on Eurosport & didn't know it was on BC instead.
I think TDU was on sky before, not ES. I have ES (German, £80 HD satellite kit) and hadn't seen it before.
One of the really rubbish things about pay TV in this country is there's basically only Sky doing it broadcast and they only let you use their receivers. This makes it difficult for other providers to enter the market, compared with a market where people use standard receivers where you put your subscription card into a Common Access Module and slot that into the receiver. There are receivers which take two or more modules, making it easier to mix subscriptions.
I doubt Discovery alone is enough to open up the market and take on Sky, though, plus I think their channels were carried on Sky's multiplexes, so they would have to rearrange broadcast, plus persuade people to buy new receivers (already available in stores like
Maplin, B&Q, sometimes Lidl and so on) alongside their sky ones, plus send out a load of modules and subscription cards... can't see it, sadly.
Also, some other countries seem to be copying Sky's suppression of competition and switching from modules to single-service receivers. Most recently France, I think. It would be nice to think that British fair play means that we could buck the trend, but I doubt it and anyway, neither Disco nor Sky are British.
