Branson in more Sky comments

Richard Branson has fired another salvo in the war with words with Sky, who this week withdrew Sky One and some other channels from Virgin Media's cable platform.

Branson, who appeared on BBC News 24's Straight Talk with Andrew Neil this morning (which I just happened to catch while channel surfing at 430AM), has come out with all guns blazing in today's Observer newspaper.

In a week where the Virgin group has also been hit by the Cumbrian train crash (which was discussed in depth on the News 24 programme), Branson said of Rupert Murdoch's Sky:

"[BSkyB] is trying to strangle us at birth. It's using its dominant market position to push up prices and I think it is something the authorities should look at. Sky wants to extort a fortune from us and we are not having it."

On Straight Talk, he made much of how much enjoys taking on existing providers and shaking things up - something already achieved when Virgin Atlantic took on British Airways, and he seems to relish the challenge of doing it again in taking on Sky.

Sky's responded quickly to Branson's comments:

"The contention that we were seeking to double prices is not correct. Our offer was generous in that we wanted to make more channels available, as well as additional services, such as video-on-demand." Asked why Sky had rejected Virgin's offer of arbitration to settle the dispute, the spokesman said: "This is a question that management should decide, not arbitrators."

The bearded one has indicated that he's ready for the legalities on the back of Sky's stake in ITV being referred to Ofcom:

"We are going to settle this to our satisfaction; we have a great legal team at the company; we are going to win."

One observer told, er, The Observer of Murdoch:

"Probably he was afraid, too, that ITV's back catalogue would only be available on Virgin Media. This whole thing is about business - and it's personal, too."