As concerns grow about the intent of French group Vivendi, Rupert Murdoch is expected to take the chairmanship of BSkyB later this week. The move follows the sale of Pathe's sale of it's 17% share in BSkyB to Vivendi. A replacement from Vivendi would be anathema to BSkyB due to Vivendi having a 34% stake in Canal Plus which in turn has connections with BSkyB rivals ONDigital.

BSkB recently stopped paying dividends on shares in order to fund the free Sky Digital receiver programme. It was estimated that this programme would cost the company £300 Million. To date the takeup on the Sky Digital services has been poor even with the announcement that the analogue BSkyB services would be switched off within two years.

This is a critical period for BSkyB. Merger talks with Canal Plus a few months ago failed to reach any agreement. Canal Plus may well be interested in taking over BSkyB thus giving them access to the UK market. However the interwoven nature of BSkyB may cause problems for the imposition of a newer access control system.

One of the major strengths of BSkyB in being able to fight off a takeover is that the access control system is that of News Datacom - a subsidiary of News Corporation. Thus if a takeover had occurred, the new owners would still have to deal with the embedded problem of the access control system. It gave Murdoch's News Corporation a stranglehold on BSkyB. News Corporation is the biggest single shareholder in BSkyB with shares of 40%.

With a low takeup of the digital services, BSkyB is potentially vulnerable to a takeover now than at any time in it's history. It is in a transition from purely analogue services to purely digital services. And the transition has not progressed far enough to be irreversible. Canal Plus would be well aware of this. While the imposition of a new access control system would take time, it would be a lot easier to do with the relatively low Sky Digital figures.

However a purely corporate takeover by Canal Plus (without an access control system replacement) could also be possible. Given the fiasco with the IRDETO designed system, there is one fundamental rule of access control systems: Divided We Stand. There is strength in diversity - a single access control system requires only one hack. The history of BSkyB has been proof of this.

Another interesting development in BSkyB's access control strategy has been the launch of the new 12 card (the 0C). This card will probably be the last card for the BSkyB analogue VideoCrypt system. But it would not be unlikely to see a new revenue stream opening up for News Datacom (News Data Systems) when the BSkyB transition to digital is completed. With possibly as many as ten million VideoCrypt decoders in the market, it would be a convenient low cost access control platform. Chris Carey's KeyCrypt system proved the viability of an open version of VideoCrypt. The system was dubbed Enigma and used by the now defunct porn channel Red Hot Dutch.