How do you think cable companies feel about streaming/free TV? [I Love Internet]

@twiigss Briatian's ITV (broadcast service) has always taken something like that third route, when the programme is broken at intervals for advertisements.

You Tube is even worse, with videos broken about every two minutes by ads for nothing at all relevant to the video! I think you can have these omitted but only by paying an expensive subscription.

As far as I know, cable TV never really took off in Britain, but there are many commercial radio-stations here that pretend to be local; broadcasting basically nothing but pop-music and advertisements.


I don't know the Internet-TV situation here as I don't watch it, but from what little I have seen many are are single-interest (e.g. sports or drama) services paid for by advertisements or very expensive subscriptions.

My ISP is BT, and from time to time it e-posts to me advertisements for costly "smart"-'phones and its so-called "Halo" system. This is a high-speed broadband service that sells at a price to match, similarly, single- and very narrow- interest material like films or Premier-League football: apparently at one price per interest, around £30 - £40 / month - so up to £10 / week.

It would become very expensive if you have wide interests and tastes but had to rely on subscriptions, especially at one fee per interest. This is ignored by those who attack the absurdly-cheap "TV Licence". That finances the BBC's many broadcast TV and radio services, at about £3 a week, much less than a pint of beer; and covers an enormous range of interests in one go.

(If you have a radio only, no TV as I choose, you are not charged - which I admit is free-loading; and I'd be happy to see a more sensible Licence Fee of say, £180/yr for the lot, £50/yr radio only, to keep it alive.)

@ArishMell Wow. That is way different then what we have here in the States. All we ever really had is cable tv, and now we have Internet, and then today's modern world we have streaming over the internet.

The cable TV subscriptions probably going to cost you upwards of about $200 USD. AM/FM radio is free, but it's mostly music.

@twiigss Indeed! I don't know why cable TV did not last long here. It might have been slow to arrive and soon became overtaken by the Internet; but it would also have been very costly, slow and disruptive to install all those buried cables to so many homes.

Almost all radio broadcasters here use FM although some of the BBC output is also still on AM Long-wave; and a lot now on "Digital Audio Broadcasts". The latter suffers from shaky reception in some areas, as does FM, but it also comes slightly delayed, so you can't use it for reliable time-setting within seconds.

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All five BBC Radio channels are primarily FM plus Internet:

Radio 1 is almost all chart and dance-club pop; R2 is becoming just an other pop channel playing older hits, having thrown away its special music-magazine shows covering for example, brass bands and theatre-organs;

Radio Three - mainly but not only "classical" including Classical music and related including music being written now, from avant-garde to film and video-game themes; hosts the annual 6-week "Proms" that is the worlds' largest and longest-running international music festival;

R4: speech, a very range: news and current affairs, drama, book readings, comedy, investigative journalism*, science and medicine, special-interest topics...

R5: mainly just sports, which in the professional world usually means just football and maybe rugby and football and cricket and football and...

Plus several digital / on-line offerings though mainly repeats, and "podcasts".

Also the founder and still active member of the European Broadcasting Union, live-music exchange scheme between public-service broadcasters. Among other things this relays the matinee performances of the Autumn season from the Metropolitan Opera House, New York.
......

*The investigations included a long series on the Post Office "Horizon" scandal, well before ITV grabbed the limelight with its dramatised TV documentary on it. One series tried to trace the origins of Qanon, and a present one has managed to track down and even interview "The Scorpion" as he calls himself, who masterminded most of the people-smuggling across Europe.

@HumanEarth I know how you feel. I really hate how most customer service is online. I grew up with calling the company and pressing zero to talk to talk to someone for assistance. And I don't use social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.

I think I'm kinda in the middle. There's some new stuff I like but other stuff I don't like.

@HootyTheNightOwl Well using the computer or watching TV is still going to use the internet. But I only work something like 10 minutes from home mon-fri.

@twiigss Yeah, but, if you're working away from home 40 hours per week, you only have 2-4 hours per day you're going to be using the computer or watching TV.

Let's say your phone updates once a week - and that takes 10 minutes... on the whole those few hours a month could work out expensive, unless you have housemates to split the costs with and increase your usage.

On the weekend, you might order a delivery of your groceries online - but you're still doing laundry and other chores that you didn't get to all week between your internet usage time.

@HootyTheNightOwl Well no, not really. I work from 7am to 330pm. So I get way more than 2-4 hours per day. I usually get on the computer around 4pm, go to bed around 10pm, so I'm on for 6 hours a day through the work week. Then Saturdays and Sundays I'm on the computer from when I wake up until I go to bed. One time I sat here and played WOW for 11 hours straight while on Skype with a friend.

I will say, if I work overtime, then yes, I'm only getting 3 to 4 hours of use out of it Mon-Fri. Overtime is off for right now, so I've got more time at home.

Plus I'm not the only one living here, there's like 4 other people in the house and unless they go out for something, they're here all day. And chores here isn't the typical norm you might be used to. No one splits the cost with me though, I pay the entire bill each month. I won't get into everything but basically we were splitting bills, then that stopped. I was paying the internet bill, and ever since the splitting bills thing stopped, I've just continued to pay the internet bill.

Typically, things work out and everyone is content.

@rosyhills spectrum, is that satellite Internet? It's been 2 years since I made this post, we now pay $110 for cable Internet. They keep raising the price by 3 dollars. It's Comcast, that's what they do. It should be against the law to just randomly raise prices with no kind of notification.

@twiigss it's an Internet provider.
Shop around.

@rosyhills Well, I know satellite will be cheaper rates, but less reliable. DSL isn't an option, and comcast is the only cable internet provider in my area, because of how rural the area is. If Verizon had internet out here, that's who I would switch to.

@Stereoguy Well, comcast is our internet provider. Unfortunately if comcast goes, we don't have another option for cable internet. Our next choice would be satellite, and on a cloudy day, we're screwed.