30 September 2008

Picnic saga: service "conditionally approved"

Days after a public spat between Ofcom and Sky over the broadcaster's plans to launch subscription service Picnic on DTT, the spineless regulator has announced a consultation into conditionally approving the plans.

Despite a wide range of concerns – from Sky's dominance of the market to it's membership of the company behind Freeview – it said that preventing Sky from launching new services would be "highly interventionist" and that unless it were "convinced that such action is necessary and proportionate" it would be "wary" of blocking Picnic entirely.