q. about UK television

[KaiserJ]

was watching a fighting sports event that in north america was PPV... ESPN watermark... but after every round, they showed a commercial...

after much googling, i'm still confused... so a few questions...

1) do you guys have PPV there? how about for things like UFC, boxing etc... or is it by channel subscription (pay for a month of ESPN for instance, and get all the events in a chunk payment)
2) if yes, do they show adverts on PPV programs? how about ones that are broadcast or produced from the UK (as a contrast, the last carl froch fight i watched didn't have any ads iirc)
3) what is the cost of having satellite there (tv licence inclusive)
4) is england vs switzerland football on saturday PPV for you guys (costs 25 cdn for me)

thanks in advance for the clarifications

[Panda]

Yes, we have PPV, but I don't usually watch it. I don't remember it having commercials when I did watch it a long time ago.

[smoth]

He's asking about UK not US panda

[KaiserJ]

but in the UK though

seems different in europe; from what i've heard in many countries you must pay a tax for each television set you have (even stranger in germany, where you must pay for each radio and computer as well)

the PPV stuff you get is likely the exact same as mine (had the direct tv sattelite for a few years... same programming as canada, just more of it. and a ton more porn. amazing that people still pay to watch porn on tv)

[AF]

PPV? Pay Per Vision?

Here in the Uk we have the TV license, which come sin colour and black and white forms, though the idea of a black and whit elicense is absurd to people these days. It's ~£120 a year.

The funds raised by thsi goes to fund the public division fo the BBC, and is also sued to help fund the other major terrestrial broadcasters, aka ITV/CHannel 4/Channel 5/S4C, although those channels are commercial and recieve help and rely primarily on advertising. Some license money goes towards broadcast towers, some goes towards funding infrastructure projects such as faster broadband.

The BBC itself has a commercial arm called BBC Worldwide which sells BBC content abroad, ( though not all of it ) and deals with merchandise.

Our TV itself consists of the BBC channels and a large number of commercial channels. These broadcast over terrestrial conventional signal via a TV aerial using DVB-T on a service called freeview ( formerly ITV Digital, but that went bust and the BBC took it over and made it free ), although DVB-T2 is being used to launch freeview HD.

Freeview as one can imagine is totally free for anyone with a license fee ( though you need a TV license for your premises to use a TV legally anyway ( per premises, not per TV ) ).

There is also Freesat, which is basically freeview via satelite. But not quite the same.

Commercially we have 3 major TV delivery providers. Sky, Virgin, and BT.

Sky ( BSkyB ) is the classic Satellite TV provider. They do the Sky+ boxes and the Sky HD/Sky3d stuff that nuked Tivo in the UK market. With Sky you get all the freeview channels and then about 1k~ channels, with various channel packages.

There's also Sky Box Office and the sky movie channels that let you pay to watch things.

Virgin uses Cable, or rather Fibre to the cabinet ( although there's rumours of fibre to the home and ahs been for years ). they're also the main provider of Fibre internet in the UK. They do similar to Sky, but theyre not quite as big, and they dont have the same penetration.

BT ( main phone provider, former public utility company since privatised ), released BT vision a few years ago with certain internet packages ( basically IP TV ).

As a sidenote, there is no advertising on the BBC channels save adverts for BBC shows. This means no advertisement breaks of any kind, and at most 20s-1min worth of clips between programs. BBC channels also have no product placement, and product placement requires the use of a 'c' symbol in the corner whenever it happens. Product placement was banned on British TV until this last year ( though movies and US imports got away with it ).


Most major UK TV companies are experimenting with clones of the BBC iPlayer at the moment.

There is no radio license as far as I'm aware, Radio stations pay for themselves via advertising ( except BBC Radio ), though Radio stations in the last decade are loosing money

[MidKnight]

Free TV for people with a license, no ads on BBC, more cool stuff.

Wow. That sounds astounding! It's certainly better than our "pay $70 per month to get 600 channels that play ads for 7 minutes out of every 30." system.

I was watching a BBC show earlier. I was surprised at the total lack of advertising (well, they did talk about The Office during the credits, but moot point). The fact that there were no commercial breaks boggles my mind. In a good way.

[KDR_11k]

Public stuff seems to be pretty bad in the US, in Europe public TV stations are commonplace and well developed (e.g. here the public stations have better news programmes than the private ones, way less bias and yes, they do attack the government).

We had a pay TV subscription some time back (paying for channels, not just the delivery system, the company got bought out by Sky), there was an option for PPV but we never used it. It offered movies before they'd show on pay TV (and way earlier than on free TV). Sports are always broadcast on free TV though pay TV may offer more coverage, especially of minor events. There are often legal disputes about who gets what as the public stations will always displace private ones due to the lack of ad breaks (however during live football matches even the private ones won't do ads outside of the half time break). Sometimes you can switch channels if there are multiple broadcasts of the same event to dodge the ad breaks. AFAIK they tend to do PIP for stuff like Formula 1 that has no breaks and then do a quick recap after the ad break is over.

[AF]

Here football events are bid for, and you might end up with live sport events on Sky, unavailable to terrestrial until a later date, or showing on ITV.

The main channels in the UK are:

BBC 1
BBC 2
ITV ( there are franchises of this across the country that vary, e.g. Granada )
Channel 4 ( or S4C in Wales with slightly different programming)
Channel 5

Those 5 channels composed Terrestrial TV.

Freeview has ~30-40 TV channels and ~60 freeview radio channels.

Additions include:

BBC 3
BBC 4
ITV+1
ITV 2
Channel 4 +1
CBBC
BBC News 24
QVC
Fiver
Dave ( mostly topgear reruns )
E4
etc

and a single Sky channel that changes every now and again.

Channels are regulated by Ofcom which places limits on how much advertising is allowed and what can be shown and when.

Many channels have obligations as part of their broadcast license, for example Channel 4 was tasked with showing the alternative side of society, and when it went live, had much more freedom with swearing etc, although its remit is incompatible with its commercial interests, leding to shows such as Big Brother, Super Fat Super Skinny, Extraordinary people: the human tree, etc. ITV and channel 4 have local news obligations, ITV has childrens TV obligations, and they need a sufficiently wide base of programming coverage. They gain part of the license fee to help with this but not enough to fund those programmes.

Of note, UK channels are free to broadcast and show BBC work, so long as its within the confines of the UK. Showing BBC shows elsewhere requires a commercial license from BBC Worldwide ( which turns a quite healthy profit which keeps the license fee down). Channels that exploit this include UK Gold, which shows old BBC programs from 10-20 years ago, and Dave which continually repeats Top Gear in 3 hour marathons on a near daily basis.



As I understand it in the US, public broadcasting is where you pay to put your stuff on PBS/etc

In Europe, Public broadcasters are state funded independent organisations, tasked with providing good programming and being neutral. For example the BBC must not be biased, and must report equally on all political parties in the publics interests, else it will get into trouble with the BBC Trust.

[KaiserJ]

that all sounds great tbh

with aerial TV here i get about 25 channels (2 of which are PBS, 10 are from the USA)

paying about $50/ month for satellite...

100 or so "network" channels... cbc, cbs, nbc (lots of its from the USA, i would say as much as 75%)
100 or so "lifestyle" channels that you buy as extra, this is for things like BBC, MTV, and lots of specialty channels for religious stuff and god knows what (i rarely flip to get that high up on the list because there's literally -nothing- there)
10-ish channels for sports ...this is done regionally... people in my city generally CBA to watch sports teams from vancouver for instance, so we'll get stuff on there like our cities' teams and then international sports
1 PBS channel

that about sums it up, every channel, even BBC (called BBC canada) has advertisment breaks every 8 mins or so for 2 mins. the only ones that dont have it are premium movie channels and the single solitary PBS on the list (but half the time i want to watch something on there, they are doing a "pledge drive" because they are not fully supported by the government where someone begs you to send them money)

i would prefer the UK service. i hate ads, and i have a feeling you would have a better lineup of shows overall (assuming they have funny stuff there from international like "trailer park boys" or "summer heights high" or "the office" from the USA... also i really find news / sports coverage from the USA unwatchable due to bias (you'd think from watching NBC that they were the only participants in the olympics for instance )

anyways. to my original point... due to my taste in sports (i suppose unusual for a canadian) i only really want to watch boxing/martial arts/football on a week to week basis... often find myself on a certain streaming site claiming a london location.

watching an event (normally UFC) that would otherwise be PPV on this site, he seems to be streaming from some strange channel (ESPN watermark, so USA origin) that actually has ad breaks during the event which is extremely unusual... and all of the ads are for english stuff. thats really what spurred me to make the post in the first place, and after your good breakdown AF it seems even more mysterious. i wonder where the hell the channel is coming from o.O

[AF]

That's profiteering, though some UK channels have been known to do it.

The only downside to advertless TV and ofcoms advert rules, is that a lot of imported shows have obvious advert breaks where there are no adverts, e.g. a program with 8 advert breaks that only has 4, with the narrator suddenly re-explaining everything for everyone after a nonexistant break, though that tends to be on cheaper programs.

For US stuff , Channel 5/Five have a dedicated channel called 5 USA, and BBC 3 shows a lot of imported comedy, though mostly Family Guy and American Dad are what people watch for. A lot fo stuff is put on BBC 3 comedy wise to test the waters, and graduates to BBC2/1 if its successful.

Freeview has 2 music channels, and E4 shows E4 music of a morning making 3. There's also Film Four, the free movie channel, it has advert breaks though.

A Sky box with no subscription can use freesat aka all the free sky channels ( 240 ) http://www.sky.com/shop/tv/free-to-air-channels/

Every week/month Ofcom produces a report showing what complaints were made and violations of the regulations, and whether they were upheld or rejected. This could include MTV showing 30 seconds more advertising in a day than it should do, or complaints about various comments from Jeremy Clarkson in the latest Topgear.

There's also other regulatory bodies controlling things such as phone in competitions, and there's only 1 Lottery operator allowed ( though through it, others can be done, e.g. EuroMillions )

[MidKnight]

Public stuff seems to be pretty bad in the US, in Europe public TV stations are commonplace and well developed (e.g. here the public stations have better news programmes than the private ones, way less bias and yes, they do attack the government).

Our public radio is a lot like that. It has excellent programming, too. The only annoyance is that the time normally spent to air ads is instead used to talk about whatever company's giving them the big grant donation this week.