A dispute has broken out between Britain's three biggest commercial television companies over payments worth £60m.

BSkyB claims it is owed the money for its one-third share in British Digital Broadcasting, or BDB, which last year won the licence to run around 15 new digital television channels.

Regulators ruled that Sky could not be a shareholder in the new company, so it agreed to sell out to its two partners, Carlton and Granada, for just over £70m. Now a writ claims that £60m of that still has not been paid.

The dispute could be awkward for BDB. Although BSkyB will be competing with BDB it will also be supplying it with four of its 13 channels, three of them subscription sport and film channels.

According to BBC media correspondent Nick Higham: "Without such attractive programming BDB could find it much harder to attract subscribers".

At present Sky and Granada share a chairman, Gerry Robinson, but he is unlikely to end up suing himself: the European competition authorities have insisted that he resign as a director of BSkyB.
 

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