Friday 30 July 2010

Sky's HBO deal not water-tight

Friday 30 July 2010
Sky's announcement that they've struck a £150m deal with HBO for exclusive UK rights to their back catalogue and future commissions isn't quite as comprehensive as first thought...

FX have stepped in to assure viewers that they still retain the pay-TV and first-run rights to True Blood, Eastbound & Down and The Wire. It's also been confirmed that the majority of HBO's archive will find a home on Sky's video-on-demand service Anytime, rather than be spread out amongst its suite of broadcast channels.

It's not yet clear if this means HBO shows will become unavailable to rival video-on-demand services (like Virgin Media's OnDemand), but that does seem very likely.

Sky have also revealed that Entourage (which has been shown in the UK on ITV2) will be the first HBO show to join its network soon.