[WillPS]

They did, but not for many years later. BSB needed rescueing when cable was all small seperate companies. 

BSB merging with Westminster Cable or Videotron wouldn't have helped either company. There were no synergies to exploit between the the two and the costs and losses of BSBs operation dwarfed that of a cable company. Digging up roads is expensive, BSB were operating spacecraft! 

Could they have got together a large group of cable companies and merged them all together with BSB? Even if it was allowed by law or the ITC it would take ages and there'd still be little benefit. And if they did the satellite bit was still struggling to make that business work without having the distraction of lots of other businesses to integrate with. 

Cable TV only really came mainstream when it all became Virgin Media and even then it was a minority platform. If BSB had survived that long then it would had been a real possibility.

Yes, but BSB mostly needed rescuing because all their projections were based on the presumption their only competition was cable TV.

The synergies would have been largely the same as the ones between cable companies (or indeed between themselves and Sky in the real world). Back office/sales and content.

I have no doubt that their predictions were still wild and they would still have been a mess with or without Sky but they didn't expect to have a competing system on sale at Currys, Comet, Rumblows etc; leave alone one which beat them to market by several months and had far lower fixed costs.

Let's not forget that Sky was also a money pit at the point they and BSB merged, as was every single cable company at the point they merged or were consumed. Being a loss making money pit is not the same as being unviable - it's over when the banks decide there is no money to be made from you any more.