Cable TV customers suffer Sky blackout after row

Hundreds of thousands of cable television customers may be waking up to blank screens on some of their favourite channels today after the deadline passed in a row between Sky and Virgin Media.

Talks have broken down between the two sides in the row over how much Virgin Media – formerly known as NTL – pays Sky to screen its channels.

Virgin Media customers reported that Sky channels including Sky One and Sky News disappeared from their screens shortly after midnight this morning.

Both channels refused to make an official comment after the current contract between the two cable platforms expired at midnight.

Virgin Media viewers reported that former Sky channels had gone blank apart from a message reading “Old Sky”.

It will come as a blow to fans of hit series such as 24 and Lost, who will now be unable to follow their favourite shows.

Sky One, Sky Travel, Sky News and Sky Sports News are the channels affected by the dispute.

Although neither company would comment after the deadline, a statement on Virgin Media’s website said: “We’ve spent the last few weeks trying to make sure that all of Sky’s channels remain on Virgin Media.

“But Sky asked us to pay such an unrealistically high price that keeping them would mean asking you to pay the kind of increase that is simply unfair.

“We refuse to stand by and see our customers get ripped off.

“So thanks to Sky, some of their non-premium channels, like Sky One and Sky News have disappeared from our service.”

Virgin’s chief executive Steve Burch had previously said the impact of removing Sky’s channels from its service would be “fairly minimal".

Sky was also unavailable for comment, but a statement on its website dated yesterday blames Virgin for the dispute.

It read: “We are absolutely committed to continuing talks and we’ve even gone so far as to offer a way for Sky to retail channels directly to cable customers that would cost Virgin Media nothing.

“Unfortunately, there is a real chance that Virgin Media will drop these channels.”

Talks between BSkyB chief James Murdoch and Virgin Media chief Steve Burch came to a standstill during a telephone conversation yesterday.

Sky has rejected Virgin Media’s offer of arbitration and Virgin Media has rejected Sky’s latest offer and confirmed it would not table a new offer of its own.

Sky has also proposed to retail its basic channels directly to Virgin Media customers if Virgin Media will provide access to its closed platform.