Still no end in site to UK digital satellite fiasco
A report in today's Media Guardian suggests that the UK is no nearer to finding a solution to the farce over the viewing of the "free to air" commercial TV channels on digital satellite. Sky TV is in the process of upgrading its encryption technology, and was planning to send out upgraded viewing cards both to its subscribers and to the 659,000 households that do not subscribe to Sky but want to receive the basic "free to air" channels via satellite rather than cable or terrestrial transmitters. Some of these households, in remote parts of the country, had never been able to get good reception until the DSat service started.
To prevent the broadcasts being received outside the UK (for copyright reasons) the signals were "soft encrypted" by Sky, and could only be received by inserting a viewing card. Earlier this year the BBC, which had been financing the issuing of the free viewing cards, announced it was moving its transmissions to a different Astra satellite, 2D, which has a tighter footprint, and that it would no longer require encryption. The advantage is that, for the first time, all the BBC's national and regional variations will be available to viewers across the entire UK. So a viewer in London can watch BBC Scotland, for example. However, where existing rights agreements only allow transmission within a designated area (for example, Scottish football) the programme will not be available.
The bad news is that the transmissions of ITV, Channel 4 and Five - which are freely available on other platforms - continue to require a viewing card on satellite. On hearing of the BBC's decision to stop funding them, Sky immediately stopped sending out replacements for the free cards, leaving an estimated 200,000 households facing the prospect of losing these services when the older method of encryption is switched off by Sky, reportedly within weeks. The BBC's Web site says that the newer version cards should still decode ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 for "3-5 years" until Sky's next major upgrade. Other sources suggest their life could be much shorter.
At last, a day after the BBC turned off encryption, some MP's at Westminster appear to be taking the issue seriously. Media Guardian says Chris Bryant, Labour MP for the Rhondda (an area of Wales where terrestrial reception can be poor) has called on the government to step in and resolve the issue. He said the affected viewers would have to switch back to their analogue aerials [sic] to receive the main channels - against the government's policy of converting the whole country to digital TV by 2010.
ITV was supposed to issue a statement this week, but that has been postponed. It seems that the industry has adopted a "wait and see" policy. Channel 4 and Five, which have much lower market shares than ITV, seem resigned to losing a relatively small number of viewers, but ITV - traditionally the BBC's main rival, and heavily dependent on viewing figures to attract advertisers - stands to lose much more. Sky has said it will resume supporting all the free cards if someone pays them to. So far, nobody has indicated a willingness to do that. Meanwhile, the clock is ticking as Sky is reportedly almost ready to ditch the old encryption method.
In the longer term, an interesting issue will be the effect on viewing patterns of the BBC's decision to make its national regions (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) available across the whole country. There, are for example, a huge number of Scots people living in England. Many of them number amongst the 7 million Sky subscribers who can now watch BBC Scotland. At the moment, the new services are not on the Electronic Programme Guide, but from 29 July they will be. The audience measurement system will need to be changed to take account of the expanded range of BBC channels on offer. This could also influence attitudes about whether to get digital satellite. Some peoples' loss, it seems, is other peoples' gain.
12:15:06 PM 
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