Sky Unveils Picnic Brand

LONDON, October 1: Sky has unveiled plans for Picnic, which
will offer British consumers a bundled service consisting of broadband access,
telephony and digital terrestrial television.

The television offering will provide Sky Sports 1, Sky
Movies and Sky One. The Picnic TV service will initially consist of 3 MPEG-2
video streams but, subject to approval by Ofcom, Picnic aims to move to MPEG-4
and add a fourth channel dedicated to Sky News. Sky Sports 1 will run 24 hours
a day. Sky Movies will be begin airing at 6 a.m. and will end between 3 a.m. to
6 a.m. In between, the service will offer a children’s channel. Similarly, Sky
One will broadcast from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m., with the daytime hours home to a
factual channel. The service will also deliver access to the Freeview channels.

The offering will make use of the Easynet fiber network and
will be available to around 70 percent of U.K. homes. Picnic’s broadband and
telephony services will be based on the model already deployed by Sky for its
Sky Broadband and Sky Talk services.

The satellite platform said in a statement that it believes
Picnic “represents an attractive commercial opportunity; expanding its
addressable market, complementing its existing offering and generating a
healthy financial return.”

The Picnic compatible boxes will be produced by multiple
manufacturers and sold by a variety of retailers. Manufacturers will be
responsible for the specification of their boxes and will decide which
additional features to include, such as PVR functionality or the ability to
receive pay-TV services from other providers. Picnic says it will not subsidize
the boxes and retailers will be responsible for setting prices. The initial
manufacturer will be Sagem and it is expected that others will follow shortly
after launch. In addition, Picnic aims to make its TV service available on PCs
in the future.

James Murdoch, Sky's chief executive, noted: “The launch of
Picnic will be a big step forward for customers who are hungry for value and
simplicity. We are looking forward to the conclusion of the regulatory approval
process so we can get going delivering a great service and real savings to
customers.”