Virgin Media axe Sky Basic Channels

Virgin Media has today posted the following on their web site:

Hello,
If you're wondering whats happened to your basic Sky channels, read on to find out more.

Got Sky Sports or Sky Movies?
Then you can relax, these services are not affected. So you can keep enjoying them - just as you've always done.
What's happened to the basic channels?
- As you may have heard, we've spent the last few weeks trying to make sure that all of Sky's channels remain on Virgin Media.
- But Sky asked us to pay such an unrealistically high price that keeping them would mean asking you to pay the kind of increase that is simply unfair.
- We refuse to stand by and see our customers get ripped off.
- So thanks to Sky, some of their non-premium channels, like Sky One and Sky News have disappeared from our service.