I can’t say I’m surprised that Sky has released some more impressive results - or that it's willing to take 1,000 folk from the dole queue. It's a gritty outfit (they say 'challenger', i say 'slightly chippy') that run rings round the flat-footed broadcasting oppo.
When, at the age of 46, I became a father for the second time, the first thing I did – realising I was never going out ever again – was to get down to Peter Jones with my 13-year-old son and buy a 42-inch plasma-screen television, a Panasonic. It’s a beaut, and we almost got twin hernias dragging it into the house. OK, so it’s an eco-nightmare. And when I turn it on the lights go dim in all my neighbours' houses. But we all love it. At the same time I said goodbye to terrestrial TV and signed up for the full monty Sky package, which cost me an eye-watering sixty quid a month - which included high definition telly.
I’ve been telling my acquaintances at Sky that they don’t shout loud enough about HD. Today it looks as if they’ve finally woken up to its true competitive advantage, and are going to start seriously pushing it by reducing the price of the Sky+HD box from £150 to £49. It really is infinitely superior to vanilla TV. Indeed, you grow slightly complacent until you are forced to watch a football game on ITV and end up spending most of the 90 minutes peering at the pixels and trying to tell the difference between Craig Bellamy and Carlos Tevez (both are descended from Orks).
Incidentally, much to my wife’s horror, I’m now threatening cast off the shackles of The New Austerity and use my birthday money to trade up to the Panasonic 50-inch, despite it costing 50% more (that’s bell-curve economics for you) and despite the fact that I’ll need a forklift to get it into the house. Keynes would approve.
In today's bulletin:
Shell profits fall on lower oil price (kind of)
Davos Day One: Reasons for cheer despite the long faces
Nintendo and Sony suffer in the Land of the Rising Yen
Bank lending: not ending?
Editor's blog: Sky's no limit
