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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Why must I be divorced from The Simpsons? Why must I be divorced from The Simpsons? By Sam Leith Homer said it best: "Television: teacher, mother, secret lover." What would we do without this marvel of human ingenuity, this great one-eyed god, this pacifier of the thought-prone, childminder to the feckless, entertainer of the idle and friend of the friendless? This is the problem tens of thousands of us now face. The television is still there. But ever since Richard Branson and Rupert Murdoch fell out over money, it no longer has the latest episodes of The Simpsons on it. Or Lost. Or 24. My teacher has moved to another school. My mother has put me up for adoption. My secret lover has written me a "Dear John" letter and absconded with John Prescott. There have been several reports explaining why a number of the best Sky channels have disappeared from the digital feeds to Virgin (formerly NTL) subscribers. These have something of the feel of a concerned adult explaining a divorce to a young child. Now, Richard and Rupert both still love you very much, and that's the most important thing, but sometimes grown-ups have problems, and they can't get along very well. So Rupert is taking his things away to a different house. "But why can't you just stay together?" the uncomprehending child wails, face smeared with snot and tears. "Why are you doing this to me?" In the custody battle that follows, what should be a dignified process of separation degenerates into a festival of childish eye-gouging, as each parent attempts to poison the child's mind against the other. So, if you switch your set-top box to Sky at the moment, you get this illiterate but hilarious message: Thanks to Sky, some of the basic Sky channels, like Sky One and Sky News are no longer available. We believe that Sky want to: Limit your choice, that's why they're removing their channels from Freeview, too. At a time when Sky are taking content away, Virgin Media is: Standing up for consumers Making sure you get a better deal. And giving you more. Nasty Rupert wants to take his channels away! Just for the fun of limiting your choice! Isn't he a beast? We, on the other hand, are standing up for consumers, making sure you get a better deal, and giving you more - by, er, charging you the same price for seven fewer channels. At the bottom of this is Virgin's refusal to pay increased fees to carry Sky's channels. Virgin claims Sky was proposing to double the price; Sky says it was increasing it only by 20 per cent. I'm perfectly prepared to accept that News Corporation would love to muscle any competition clean out of the market, but there's something whining and pathetic, isn't there, about Virgin's pretended expectation that they would behave otherwise. Virgin is a big, grown-up company that would love to be News Corporation if it could. It's just as much in the business of making profits. Its spin - "Sky asked us to pay such an unrealistically high price that keeping [the channels] would mean asking you to pay the kind of increase that is simply unfair. We refuse to stand by and see our customers get ripped off" - is sanctimonious hogwash. What it actually refuses to do is stand by and either watch its profitability slide, or its subscriptions fall as it hikes prices to protect that profitability. Sky, meanwhile, probably is, as Richard Branson alleges, trying to strangle Virgin Media at birth. Until Ofcom takes a stern view about Murdoch's dominance of the market, there's nothing to stop him doing just that. The tragedy, as the old joke goes, is that both of them can't lose. But the bigger tragedy is that I still can't watch The Simpsons. Richard. Rupert. Mummy. Daddy. I miss you. Please, please, please - get back together, if only for the sake of the kids.
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