National Grid Wireless Ltd (NGW) and British Sky Broadcasting Ltd (Sky) have applied to remove the three free to air (FTA) channels that Sky currently provides on the digital terrestrial television (DTT) platform and replace them with five pay TV channels. Sky currently provides Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three on a FTA basis. These would be replaced by Sky Sports 1, Sky Movies SD1 in the evening and Sky One in the evening (including an hour of Sky News content). In addition, the remainder of Sky’s capacity would be used by Sky to retail two further pay TV channels from third party providers in the daytime: a factual channel and a children’s channel. Sky's proposed pay TV service would not be compatible with any existing set-top boxes. Consumers would therefore need a new set-top box to receive these pay TV channels.
The proposal must be considered in the context of Ofcom’s duties. Ofcom has a principal duty to further the interests of citizens and consumers, where appropriate by promoting competition. We also have other duties which could be relevant to consideration of the proposal, for example the duty to secure the efficient use of spectrum. In the light of these duties we are consulting on the issues raised by the proposal.
In addition, under broadcasting provisions, the licence variation requests will require us to consider the proposed changes against a test of whether the capacity of the services to appeal to a variety of tastes and interests is unacceptably diminished. Given that we are consulting on the issues raised by the proposal, and because the third party channels to be retailed by Sky have not yet been finalised, we are not intending to carry out this test at this stage.