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06/05/06
How Setanta can convert the country to digital by Neale You may or may not have heard last week’s announcement about the sale of live football rights. Basically, Sky Sports will show 92 live games a season (an increase from the 88 they show now), the awful Prem Plus will be scrapped (at the moment they show 50 live games), and Setanta Sports will show 46 games (which is likely to cost Sky subscribers an extra £14 a month). Now, to start with, this is rubbish. The EC decided in their wisdom that in order from them to increase competition, Sky were not allowed to own the rights to all the games anymore. Apparently this would be better for the viewer. £14 extra a month is not better. Here’s where my master plan comes in. The Government, BBC and pretty much everyone in TV wants the UK population to have digital TV by 2012, which is when the analogue transmitter will get switched off, and the frequency sold off to the highest bidder. This means everyone will either have to have a Freeview box, Sky or cable (soon to be called Virgin Cable, due to the merging of NTL and Telewest, and the buy out of Virgin Mobile). Most people will end up going the Freeview route, since this is the cheapest, with a one-off payment of around £50 (and falling). Setanta have already talked about the possibility of putting their games on the Top-Up TV service via Freeview, which would either be a subscription or pay-per-view. This is shortsightedness on their part. If they were to create a sports channel on the actual Freeview platform, and show their games on this, the demand for Freeview boxes would increase exponentially. (Ooo, big word.) The amount of viewers to this channel would be massive in comparison to if you had to pay for it. And this would mean the advertising revenue would be a lot more, as well as the opportunity for sponsorship of the football show. I’m guessing that they would make a lot more by doing this, rather than subscription or pay-per-view. It’d be just wrong to not even consider doing this. (Heh heh.) |
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by Neale My annoyance with Neighbours continues. Every single storyline I hate. So the fact that they are all dragging on so long makes it all the worse! Gah!!! Legend of the week Er...Hmm...: Yeah, no one. Tosser of the week Ned Parker: For being the one who's annoying me the most. How stupid can he actually get?! Dishonourable mention Izzy Hoyland: Gaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh!!!!!!! |