Picnic menu
BSkyB's Picnic to offer Discovery shows
With a deal for content from Discovery Networks now completed, we now know the lineup for Sky's planned Picnic service for digital terrestrial television:
Discovery (daytime)/Sky One
Disney (daytime)/Sky Movies
Sky Sports 1
Sky News (pending MPEG4 approval)
A minimum of three channels - with two of them split in half - may not sound much on paper, but Picnic has two things going for it. Firstly there's the marketing clout of BSkyB, who will no doubt have some attractive phone/broadband bundling deals planned for the new service.
Secondly it's the potential damage that Picnic will do to Setanta Sports 1 on Freeview that's the main intention from a strategic perspective, although anyone who's seriously interested in increasing their channel choice will go for a Sky satellite (or even Virgin cable) subscription instead. Picnic is initially just there to fill an small but significant gap in the Sky armoury.
Indeed it's interesting to see exactly what BSkyB has judged to be strategically important, which at this point in time seems to be Setanta (plus Top Up TV/BT Vision), Virgin Media (hence the Sky channel carriage dispute), and (also related to Virgin) control of ITV plc hence the 17.9% stake of which it may have to sell part of soon.
Up to now BSkyB has predominantly concentrated on satellite television because of the capacity and monopoly advantages, and superficially claims not to be interested in anything else. However the ITV shares purchase proves that BSkyB is ready and willing to take direct action if there's the slightest risk of a threat to its core business.
So will BSkyB be allowed to launch a terrestrial pay-TV service? One possibility is that the Picnic service will be allowed to launch but with restrictions preventing further channels from being added, although rivals will be unhappy at the prospect of any BSkyB terrestrial pay-TV service that may create an even more dangerous monopoly.
Then there's the possibility of BSkyB being forced to sell some of its ITV shares, in turn potentially triggering a takeover of ITV plc that could also create a new threat for Sky. What happens next will help to prove just how much influence the Murdoch dynasty still has over government ministers as well as being a stiff test of media impartiality.
