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BBC seeks BSkyB listings solution
The BBC will hold peace talks with BSkyB today amid concerns that the corporation will have to pay the satellite broadcaster an increased fee to appear on its TV listings service.
The BBC will withdraw from the BSkyB service on May 30 and broadcast to Sky homes from a different satellite in a move it said would save the corporation £85m in fees over five years. However, the corporation still wants to appear on the pay-TV group's on-screen channel menu, which is used by 6.6m Sky subscribers to locate their favourite programmes. BSkyB is now planning to raise the separate fees charged to the BBC for a slot on its electronic programme guide.
Earlier this year BSkyB increased its tariff for channels that broadcast on its network without using its encryption system, which the BBC will quit on May 30. The cost of listing each BBC channel on BSkyB's electronic equivalent of the Radio Times will almost treble from £28,000 a year to £75,000.
Because the BBC plans to increase the number of services it lists on the guide, the annual charges to the corporation will soar to £2.3m - a sum that would wipe out a proportion of the savings the BBC hoped to make by withdrawing from the service in the first place. The BBC paid BSkyB around £4m a year to use its network before announcing last week that it was not renewing the broadcast contract.
The BBC is facing hefty Electronic Programming Guide charges because the services it wants listed include all 22 regional versions of BBC1 and BBC2 plus eight digital channels, including News 24, BBC3 and BBC4. At present it shows only national variations of its channels. The BBC will also have to pay BSkyB to develop software that will allow viewers to switch between different regional variations.
"Sky rather looks as though it is not legally obliged to change the software, which could leave the BBC channels scattered all over the EPG," said Anthony de Larrinaga, an analyst at SG Securities.