ITV Sign 2-Month Extension with Sky

22nd November 2004

ITV have postponed their decision as to whether they go free-to-air (FTA) on digital satellite and have signed a 2-month extension to their contract to stay encrypted on Sky.

I may be reading too much into a sentence, and it may just be posturing on ITV's side to aid their position during negotiations, but the wording of the following sentence leaves me fairly optimistic that ITV will eventually go FTA (i.e. unencrypted):

"As a result ITV1 and ITV2 will remain encrypted for the time being. Further discussion will take place in due course"

I would have thought that ITV would benefit most from as few people having Sky as possible, because when people have Sky they watch the "big 5" channels significantly less due to the large number of channels available on Sky. So surely it would be in their best interests to go along with the BBC in launching a Freesat platform and retain as many viewers as they can on Freeview and Freesat.