I hate Murdoch....

http://www.techwatch.co.uk/2010/06/18/s ... -pay-only/

And look what the replacement is : Sky 3 + 1.

Possibly the least in demand channel of all time!

nooooooooooooooo thats very bad news

The next thing could be skysports.com going behind a paywall - News International newspapers already have, or are about to.

I can't say I'm surprised, I've always been a bit surprised that I can get SSN on freview but I can't get it on my SKY package.
I think it was only ever there as a taster to lure people onto SKY. Presumably they have decided that they are more likely to get people paying to watch SSN than they will by giving it away as a loss leader. I think they may be right.

Really?? I can't imagine anyone wanting to pay for a news channel actually. No matter what Murdoch thinks!

I would surprised if it did not affect the advertising revenue that the channel generates.
By removing sky sports from thousands of freeview viewers it denies them the ads, besides that the average sky sports watcher comes from a very particular demographic group. Hence all the ads are razor blades, cars, and male deodorant.

I don't think anyone would want to pay for a news channel either, but I'm wrong there because people will and do pay for news channels. Of the six sky packages available one of them is the Sky News & Events Pack (which includes SSN) and Sky must know if that works for them or not, they've been in this game for a long time and they are not going to make decisions like removing a channel from Freeview just to annoy people, they make those decisions purely in an attempt to maximise revenue, and they will have looked at this very closely.