Although it was announced last week, today the Sky Channels returned to VirginMedia after a break of over 18 months.

A new agreement has been signed between BSkyB and VirginMedia that will see the Sky basic channels on Virgin until June 2011. It appears that VirginMedia are paying BSkyB £30 million to get the basic channnels, exactly the same amount BSkyB are paying VirginMedia for their channels. It looks like the loss in revenue from advertising have put VirginMedia in a strong negotiating position. When they were both suing each other 18 months ago, according to VirginMedia’s court submission, Sky initially asked for £55 million, but later reduced this to £40 million. Sky were only paying around £5m for the VirginMedia tv channels.

Cynic that I am, I can’t help wondering how long it will be before the cost rises to ‘cover the additional channels’. Of course it didn’t go down when we lost them, so maybe not