NBA Finals fire up local cable war
THE RUSH to shift back to SkyCable among cable subscribers in Metro Manila continued to intensify yesterday.
This was confirmed by a lineman sent by SkyCable executive Red Samar to service desperate subscribers in Mandaluyong City.
The cable man said they had to work overtime in order to meet the big demand.
Article continues after this advertisementIt was also announced that SkyCable will carry the Manny Pacquiao-Shane Mosley fight tomorrow.
The frantic shift, however, was caused by the abrupt pullout of Basketball TV, exclusive carrier of live NBA games in the country, from Global Destiny Cable. (See NBA story on page A28)
Desperate Destiny subscribers interviewed by this reporter could only scratch their head and wonder whatever happened to Destiny, which failed to protect the interest of paying subscribers.
Article continues after this advertisementA waiver scrawled by Destiny last week claimed that a competitor had won exclusive options over Basketball TV.
That unidentified competitor turned out to be SkyCable.
“The NBA Finals causes fanatical reactions and we prefer to stay low-key on the issue so as not to further fan the flames,” said John Rojo, SkyCable vice president for corporate brand and communications.
However, he took exception to claims that SkyCable had been granted exclusive options over Basketball TV in the Philippines.
“Options are available not only at Sky but at Cignal and a few other franchises,” Rojo explained.
Did Destiny do enough to protect its paying cable subscribers?
Rojo refused comment except to say that, at the end of the day, it was a commercial decision by Solar.
Further inquiry bared that Solar opted to pull out Basketbal TV from Destiny after the cable provider failed to meet the required “50 percent digitalization of the sub-base of its (Solar) partner.”
Solar wanted the main base of its partner to be digital or in digibox, compared to analogues.
Analogue boxes are more widely used but are, at the same time, heavily pirated.
