Virgin Media Dispute
On 1 March 2007, at 12:00am GMT, Sky's basic channels, which included Sky1, Sky2, Sky News, Sky Sports News, Sky Travel and Sky Travel Extra were removed from the Virgin Media cable television services after a dispute between Virgin Media and BSkyB. This was due to the expiry of their previous carriage agreement and the companies' inability to reach a new deal. Virgin issued legal proceedings against Sky over the dispute in April 2007.
The Virgin Media predecessor Telewest was involved in a similar situation in late 2004 when negotiations for renewed carriage of the Nickelodeon channels broke down. Telewest was unwilling to pay extra to keep the channels and preferred to simply drop them. Other Viacom owned channels remained such as MTV and Paramount Comedy 1. The reaction to this by customers was fairly large and many left the provider to rival Sky, others were retained as Telewest offered them a free upgrade to the Disney Channel for periods of between one and three months, others were reportedly offered upgrades to Sky Movies packages in a desperate attempt to keep them from leaving. The Nickelodeon channels returned to the Telewest platform on 12 February 2005 following successful renegotiations in Nickelodeon's favour.
At the beginning of March 2008 the two companies were reported to have resumed discussions over the dispute. Virgin chief executive Neil Berkett was reported as saying they had "continued interest in securing Sky basics back on our platform". The resumed talks had followed shortly after both Virgin and BSkyB had launched appeals against a recent Competition Appeal Tribunal ruling on BSkyB's 17.9% stake in ITV plc.
On 4 November 2008, a carriage deal between BSkyB and Virgin Media channels was reached and BSkyB's channels were available on Virgin's cable service from 13 November 2008. The Sky basic channels were spread across each tier of Virgin's cable TV service: Sky3 and Sky News were made available in the lowest M tier; Sky Sports News joined the M+ tier; Sky1 and Sky2 were made available in the L tier; and Sky Arts 1, Sky Arts 2, Sky Real Lives and Sky Real Lives 2 joined the XL tier.
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