Syfyportal.com
Monday 26 February 2007, by Mokuji
The crew of the "Battlestar Galactica" may be looking for the lost 13th colony of Earth, but hundreds of thousands of viewers could be losing Adm. Adama and his ragtag fleet if News Corp.-owned Sky makes good on its threat and pulls its product from the Virgin cable network.
Sky is the channel that brings new episodes of shows like "Battlestar Galactica," "Lost" and even "24" to U.K. viewers, but a long-standing feud between them and the Virgin service provider is apparently to the point where Sky is ready to pull out for good. The dispute, of course, is over money, as Virgin officials accused of Sky for asking double the rate it had previously received, according to Guardian Unlimited. Sky officials say the increase is necessary because they have lost as much as £45 million, or $87.9 million in advertising revenue.
There has been bad blood between the two companies for a while, especially since Sky officials apparently stood in the way of recent merger plans between Virgin and ITV. Virgin control 30 percent of Sky One’s market with 3.3 million television customers. The return of "Lost" on Feb. 12 attracted 1.3 million viewers, the newspaper reported, while the first two episodes of "Battlestar Galactica’s" third season averaged just under 400,000 viewers.