Sunday 12 December, 2004

On TV

One of the things I miss about England is the incredibly high quality TV they have. Some things you take for granted you don't miss until you lose them, and TV is one of them. Previously I've lived in the two of the only countries in the world that actually have TV license and publicly funded state television... so I always thought it pretty natural, although paying the fee seemed annoying at times.

Well, here I've figured out (doh) what happens when public doesn't pay: you get ads. First time in the middle of the news on the CBC (Canadian Broadcast Company, equivalent of BBC and YLE) there was an ad break I was shocked. In fact, ad breaks on all channels are more frequent than for example in England, and seem to take forever... Half an hour program can have three or even four breaks with real program segments sometimes lasting only couple of minutes. I mean, sometimes breaks are nice for getting something from the fridge or going to the toilet, but this is taking the piss!

Also although the quantity of channels exceeds what we had previously, quality is much lower... There are some nice things like getting many TV series when they are first broadcast (but then again, it's not true for all anymore as Sky in UK has picked up several series first), and I definetly prefer Space over Sci-fi Channel. Technology is nicer too, the digital cable box we have is by far the best digi-TV system I've used, beats especially NTL that ran like a dog (press a button, wait for several seconds before anything happens), and even Sky Digital, by being very intuitive and having a lot more usable interface for actually doing what you want to do. Like TV guide for browsing what's on in other channels now and later showing five channels at a time with colour coded program types, and still actually being able to watch the progream on the current channel... seems easy enough, so why this functionality has been lacking on other systems is beyond me.

Oh well.

Posted by kolibri at 12 December 21:53, 2004
Comments
# 1 - Moira (on December 13, 2004 06:47 AM):

I remember how annoyed I was in Australia when a program had an ad break and then only the credits. I felt so cheated...


# 2 - kolibri (on December 13, 2004 07:19 AM):

Yeah! They say "We'll be back after these messages" and when they do the only thing they say "Well that's it this time, tune in tomorrow" and roll the credits. Cheating, indeed.


# 3 - Hanna (on December 13, 2004 12:51 PM):

That's exactly why European tv channels need employees like me: to edit away those excess ad breaks so people in the civilized world can enjoy American programs much the way Americans themselves can't! :)

Thank EU for only allowing two breaks per 60 minutes of allotted program slot.


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