Seven halts pay TV exemptions: report (SMH)

[Justern]

Seven halts pay TV exemptions: report
October 1, 2004 - 9:19AM

Seven Network Ltd has won a victory in its battle to gain access to Foxtel
and Telstra's $600 million digital pay television network, it was reported.
The Australian Competition Tribunal upheld Seven's appeal against the
exemption orders that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
granted when it approved the content-sharing deal between Foxtel and Optus,
The Australian Financial Review reported.

The deal gave Foxtel an effective monopoly on pay TV in capital city
markets.

Neither Seven nor Foxtel would comment in detail on the decision until they
had seen the reasons for the decision, which will be released in about two
weeks.

[Matt Cook]

Justern wrote:
> Seven halts pay TV exemptions: report
> October 1, 2004 - 9:19AM
>
> Seven Network Ltd has won a victory in its battle to gain access to
> Foxtel and Telstra's $600 million digital pay television network, it
> was reported. The Australian Competition Tribunal upheld Seven's
> appeal against the exemption orders that the Australian Competition
> and Consumer Commission granted when it approved the content-sharing
> deal between Foxtel and Optus, The Australian Financial Review
> reported.

I wonder if Seven will do as much with this right as it did with the similar
Analog rights it won for the analog system?

[Courtney Act]

"Matt Cook" <mattax@yahoo.com> wrote in message news:<cjidhl$13h8$1@otis.netspace.net.au>...
> Justern wrote:
> > Seven halts pay TV exemptions: report
> > October 1, 2004 - 9:19AM
> >
> > Seven Network Ltd has won a victory in its battle to gain access to
> > Foxtel and Telstra's $600 million digital pay television network, it
> > was reported. The Australian Competition Tribunal upheld Seven's
> > appeal against the exemption orders that the Australian Competition
> > and Consumer Commission granted when it approved the content-sharing
> > deal between Foxtel and Optus, The Australian Financial Review
> > reported.
>
> I wonder if Seven will do as much with this right as it did with the similar
> Analog rights it won for the analog system?

If you hadn't noticed, Foxtel has gone digital. So what is the point
of chasing Foxtel about the out of date analogue service?

Maybe Foxtel should cop the umpire's decision this time, instead of
adopting its pathetic attempts to delay giving independent operators
access to a taxpayer owned asset - digital cable.

[foo]

courtneyact101@hotmail.com (Courtney Act) wrote in
news:cfb4686e.0410072056.1419b26@posting.google.co m:

> "Matt Cook" <mattax@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:<cjidhl$13h8$1@otis.netspace.net.au>...
>> Justern wrote:
>> > Seven halts pay TV exemptions: report
>> > October 1, 2004 - 9:19AM
>> >
>> > Seven Network Ltd has won a victory in its battle to gain access to
>> > Foxtel and Telstra's $600 million digital pay television network,
>> > it was reported. The Australian Competition Tribunal upheld Seven's
>> > appeal against the exemption orders that the Australian Competition
>> > and Consumer Commission granted when it approved the
>> > content-sharing deal between Foxtel and Optus, The Australian
>> > Financial Review reported.
>>
>> I wonder if Seven will do as much with this right as it did with the
>> similar Analog rights it won for the analog system?
>
> If you hadn't noticed, Foxtel has gone digital. So what is the point
> of chasing Foxtel about the out of date analogue service?

His point was questioning whether Seven would do anything effective with
access rights to the digital cable, given that Seven's access rights to the
*analogue* cable was not taken up.

http://www.auspaytv.com/news/nov02/2807.htm

".. in April, C7 asked for a variation to the determination so that it
could have four [analogue] channels on Foxtel. Despite the access, Seven
never took up the initial offer for two channels. "

...

"Seven wanted to be part of the basic package, but Foxtel insisted it be on
a tier, which meant subscribers must buy the entry-level service before
paying extra for C7, just as they do for movies."


In other words, C7 wanted to be able to push itself onto FOXTEL as a
channel according to *its* terms, with *its* content but onto FOXTEL's
lineup. Which makes the following snippet all the clearer;

"It has released a document given to it by well-known Seven lobbyist Chris
North, which suggests Seven buy 20 per cent of Foxtel for $500 million in
return for ending all future legal actions. That implies Seven's real
motivation behind the legal action is to gain a slice of Foxtel, just as it
gained a stake in Optus after settling its pay-TV legal dispute with that
company. "

So it seems it's not about access at all. It's about C7 being outside of
the party and wanting in - by any means possible.


> Maybe Foxtel should cop the umpire's decision this time, instead of
> adopting its pathetic attempts to delay giving independent operators
> access to a taxpayer owned asset - digital cable.

It's not just about access to the digital cable.

It's about access to TELSTRA's digital cable capacity
*and* seperately access to FOXTEL's satellite capacity, content delivery,
subscriber management, conditional access & set top boxes.

See the items in

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ned=us&ie=UTF-
8&scoring=d&q=foxtel+site:accc.gov.au&lr=&sa=N&tab=nw

for what's actually being accessed.

It seems like Seven is now basically looking for a better deal for buying
into FOXTEL by asking the government to legislate pricing for access to
FOXTEL.

It's a case of "if ya can't buy 'em, sue 'em".. :-)

[Matt Cook]

This is all complicated by Telstra being mainly government owned, and Foxtel
having a near monopoly in cabled areas. Forces within the government have
tried to stop Telstra's other monopolies with all sorts of handicaping
rules. The High Court ruled (after a challenge by Seven) a few years ago
that because of these rules, Telstra had to offer access to the their
analogue TV cable *and the Foxtel analogue set-top-boxes*.

Seven could have set up their own analogue system, with their own billing,
channel numbering and everything else. They could have used any of the
English language channels TARBS had, and depending on the bandwidth
allocated, they could have put together a marketable service. But they felt
they couldn't work with what was offered, and tried to get on the Foxtel
EPG. They didn't like the terms offered either.

Seven claims the terms were too harsh, and went against their ruling. Foxtel
and Telstra claim Seven's decisions not to use their network was their
commercial decision. Now there's a similar digital ruling, things are likely
to happen the same way again.

Foxtel obviously wants it's network to itself. Telstra wants what Foxtel
wants because that will make it the most money. What Seven wants is less
clear.

Before the "content merger", Seven could have easily launched all sorts of
satellite packages. Even now it could offer competition to Foxtel and Austar
in uncabled areas using satellite. Perhaps this can all be explained by the
lack of profitability in the sector. Both Austar and Foxtel lose huge sums
of money each year. The only way Seven could hope to make money in the short
term is to heavily mooch off Foxtel and/or Telstra.