Sky 'bids £160m for Virgin channels'

Sky has placed a knockout bid of £160m for Virgin Media Television's Virgin1, Living, Bravo and Challenge channels, according to the Financial Times.

The paper reported that other bidders including Channel 4, NBC Universal, Time Warner and Five parent company RTL placed bids nearer the £100m mark.

Virgin Media's bouquet of channels were at the centre of the Sky Basics dispute, which saw basic Sky channels including Sky1 pulled from Virgin Media cable in March 2007 and not restored until November 2008. In a suit filed at the High Court, Virgin alleged that Sky had forced it to accept a substantially lower rate, for the Virgin Media Television channels to be carried on Sky's satellite TV service, while at the same time demanding more cash for the carriage of Sky1 and other basic services on cable. Sky denied the allegations.