The phony digital television war rumbles on in Europe – the real action will only start in late fall when both British Sky Broadcasting Plc and British Digital Broadcasting say their DTV services will be available for the public at large to buy into. However, the latest salvo in this conflict has been unwittingly fired by the grand-daddy of UK broadcasting, the British Broadcasting Corporation. The BBC, an organization funded by viewers paying a license fee, not through advertising revenue – unlike any other UK broadcaster – has paid an undisclosed sum to put four TV channels (two broadcasting in a digital widescreen format) and five radio channels up on BSkyB’s digital satellite platform. The Independent Television Corporation (ITV) has refused to pay for digital versions of its main channels to be broadcast by BSkyB, although analog versions will still be broadcast by the Rupert Murdoch-owned company (CI No 3,399). In addition, a report in the Financial Times claims that Channel Five, the smallest of Britain’s main TV broadcasters is to discuss with Oftel, the UK’s broadcasting regulator, the terms offered by BSkyB to broadcast its service. A BBC spokesman said that the reasoning behind the payout to BskyB was that license payers could receive the BBC’s services whichever format (digital satellite, digital cable, digital terrestrial) set-top box they chose to buy. The BBC has already been allocated free digital cable and terrestrial space by the UK government and claimed that the decision to buy onto the BSkyB platform was dictated by circumstance, not choice. The spokesman also explained that the BBC has booked space on the Astra satellite and is using the Sky Subscribers Ltd (SSL) Conditional Access and Customer Management System to prevent the services from being beamed Europe-wide.
