For Broadcast May 24, 2007

My lucky number is seven. John Hammond's are 137, 138 and 139. John was the owner of Life TV Media but he's playing a very savvy numbers game and is on the brink of selling his company lock, stock and barrel for something in the region of L2m to Channel 4.

In fact, the Life TV Media "empire" is pretty modest, based in that media hub known as Maidstone and with not much more than some shopping blocks and some fillers, like reruns of The Beverly Hillbillies. What the C4 mandarins want is not the Life "empire" but its three EPG slots on the Sky Digital platform.

E4 just happens to be at slot 140, E4 + 1 is 141, and More4 is 142. The deal (99% complete, according to sources) will provide C4 with a six-channel neighbourhood on Sky which it believes will provide more chance of catching passing eyeballs as they scour the EPG.

Just how important the neighbourhood is to channels was underscored last year when Sky rejigged the EPG genre definitions. It bumped quiz channels out of entertainment and into their own gaming and dating neighbourhood, resulting in some of the biggest quiz channels clocking a 50% decline in revenues.

You don't have to look very far along the Sky EPG to see more possibility for wheeling and dealing. ITV has channels at 118 to 120 but ITV2+1 and ITV3+1 live streets away on 211 and 213 respectively. If you were Virgin Media with your Bravo and Challenge channels at 121 to 125, might you not want to pick up the phone to Sir Michael and discuss trading EPG slots for a few quid? And Discovery's channels are sprinkled all over the place - wouldn't it love a chunk of contiguous EPG slots?

Now a ballpark figure is in the marketplace for EPG trading, all we need is a couple more neighbours to chat over the fence....

Will BT Vision become a serious player in the television market?

BT Vision has finally started above-the-line advertising for its set-top box. The pitch is Freeview channels, a PVR and the ability to watch movies and TV shows on-demand. The boys at Vision say that the company will make money in three years. True or false?

If the plan is to work, BT Vision needs 3 million customers and, with 3.7 million people already subscribing to BT Broadband, it doesn't seem too great a stretch to persuade a whole bunch of them to upgrade to BT Vision.

After all, the switch will cost a one-off fee of L90. Even if customers come to BT Vision cold, the first year charge is just over L250 for install, box and a 12-month broadband subscription. And unless you want a subscription service, there's no ongoing monthly TV charge like Sky and Virgin.

Speaking of those two, the fact they continue to fight so fiercely (and publicly) about the price Virgin is willing (or not) to pay Sky to carry its channels means BT Vision is out of the crosshairs, at least for now. Used wisely, BTV might just sneak in a few more subscribers while the big two are scrapping.

For once, BT will likely be a winner, one way or another, in its bid to provide an alternative TV service. Vision is joined at the hip with BT Broadband and will only make the broadband offer look more valuable in a market where broadband prices are falling rapidly.

But this is a moveable feast. It's all well and good to say - as BT does Ð that its broadband costs a bit more because it's a bit faster and more reliable, but benchmarks change and BT will have to keep up.

In the best of all worlds BTV will glam up BT's broadband offer but also succeed in making money from people ordering on-demand content. But surely this is less likely?

A BT success story in television? We've got three years before we make that call.