Murdoch and Sky

As one of my recent posts might suggest, I'm not a fan of what one of Murdoch's papers have done. I don't read The Times, Sun or NOTW and I'm going to be ditching my Sky box soon.

But I still don't really understand what the big deal is with Murdoch owning Sky.

OK, I can see that someone owning influential media is a big deal, that they can report for or against one party, and perhaps not having them owning all the newspapers is a good idea. Is that affected by Sky? Well, no. He's not going to own Sky News anyway.

Or, if he was doing something that would reduce competition, that might be a bad thing. Is this deal reducing competition? Err... no.

Does Sky therefore have control over say, oil, food or spice? No. It's movies, footie and bought-in US TV shows. Anyone can live without them (as I'm about to do).

So, why is this such a big deal?