Telecommunications

The Sky brochure offered the following information:

“Discover a world of entertainment
Enjoy the shows and channels everyone is talking about including the exclusive
Sky Atlantic for just €28 a month

The original TV Bundle
55 channels Iconic series Over 200 free-to-air channels”
(Different TV Channels icons featured here)

The leaflet then included information on UK and Irish channels on offer:

“Plus all your Irish & UK favourites”
The TV channel icons included at this point were:
“RTE One & Two, TV3 & 3E, TG4, BBC 1, 2, 3 & 4, CBBC, CBeebies, CHANNEL 4, 4E and RTEjr.”

The complainant considered that the list of Irish and UK ‘favourites’ was misleading as it did not include UTV/ITV, whom he considered were a major player in the Irish TV market. He also considered that there was a danger that a consumer could sign up to Sky on the assumption that UTV/ITV was part of their package.

Sky Ireland provided a copy of the TV Audience Measurement statistics, which showed the market share for each channel in Ireland for June 2014. They said that it was their view that whilst UTV was one of the top 20 television channels viewed in Ireland, the claim itself was subjective in nature as everyone had different favourites. They said that the claim in relation to ‘favourites’ was not intended as an absolute claim and as such they did not feel that UTV needed to be included in the list. They also considered that as that list of channels available had been specifically listed, that a consumer would be aware of the channels provided before signing up to the offer.

The advertisers also said that both UTV and ITV were available through Sky set top boxes to customers who wanted to manually tune their box to pick up these channels. They concluded that while the channels needed to be manually tuned and were not amongst the logos featured in the offer, it did not take away from the fact that they were in any event available to Sky TV customers.

Complaint not Upheld.

The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint and the advertisers’ response. The Committee noted that the advertising had stated “All your Irish and UK favourites” and that the statistics provided by the advertisers showed that, based on market share, UTV appeared to be amongst the top five channels in Ireland, thereby making it a ‘favourite’ amongst Irish viewers.

The Committee noted that the complainant considered the claim misleading, however, in view of the fact that UTV/ITV could be manually tuned, and therefore was available to viewers, they did not consider that the claim was misleading.

Action Required:
No further action required.