Should We Welcome Upc Ireland Into 500,000 Homes?

a bientot

Firstly I should acknowledge that UPC is already in 170.000 homes......

On or before 8 December the Competition Authority of Ireland will say yes with conditions to the take over of the Morgan Stanley owned Dublin, Galway and Waterford cable tv systems that will ultimately lead to a total of 500,000 under the control of the one cable company the Americo-European UGC.
It will really be up to the Minister (Martin) to impose the real restrictions/ conditions in the 28 days he has to mull over the file. He really does need help from the Irish public with nearly half the population affected by this new arrangement...

UPC has announced already that it plans to distribute the same package of named channels all over Ireland in its basic package at the same price.

UPC operates in thirteen countries thoughout the Union and elsewhere in Greater Europe providing 30-35 multi-lingual channels in the very basic package costing from 8 to 15 euros maximum.

What conditions would you advise the Minister to impose on this company in dealing with the permanent basic customers -more than 75% of total?
Fixed price for ten years?
Fixed no. of channels in basic?
your ideas?

(please do not ask the Minister to remove the French German and Spanish channels from basic in certain cities (Cork) and towns (Athlone, Swords etc) .........
In order to provide the same named channels everywhere in Ireland those who see no merit in these 'other' language channels will have to ask for their removal)

Freddie59

a bientot wrote:

Firstly I should acknowledge that UPC is already in 170.000 homes......

On or before 8 December the Competition Authority of Ireland will say yes with conditions to the take over of the Morgan Stanley owned Dublin, Galway and Waterford cable tv systems that will ultimately lead to a total of 500,000 under the control of the one cable company the Americo-European UGC.
It will really be up to the Minister (Martin) to impose the real restrictions/ conditions in the 28 days he has to mull over the file. He really does need help from the Irish public with nearly half the population affected by this new arrangement...

UPC has announced already that it plans to distribute the same package of named channels all over Ireland in its basic package at the same price.

UPC operates in thirteen countries thoughout the Union and elsewhere in Greater Europe providing 30-35 multi-lingual channels in the very basic package costing from 8 to 15 euros maximum.

What conditions would you advise the Minister to impose on this company in dealing with the permanent basic customers -more than 75% of total?
Fixed price for ten years?
Fixed no. of channels in basic?
your ideas?

(please do not ask the Minister to remove the French German and Spanish channels from basic in certain cities (Cork) and towns (Athlone, Swords etc) .........
In order to provide the same named channels everywhere in Ireland those who see no merit in these 'other' language channels will have to ask for their removal)

I vaguely remember you on the boards some months ago going on about that French TV channel. I've tried to find the thread but search is disabled. Isn't it about time you gave it a rest? It's a minority, non-mainstream, non-entertaining, NON-ENGLISH SPEAKING channel. Get over it!!!:eek:

a bientot

Let's move on to the substantive issue.....
Any comment from even one of the 500,000 plus customers of UPC Irlande, sorry Ireland.....
now that the sale has been given the ok by ther Competition Authority of Ireland and Mr Malone has been warned.....

bk

I welcome our new American-European mega corp overlords

But seriously, I welcome UPC, they are a company with lots of money and who are willing to spend that money to create top quality networks capable of high quality TV, HD, BB, phone and Vod services. So hopefully they will invest in the Irish networks so we finally get a decent cable service. Also they will be big enough to compete with the dominance of Sky and Eircom (in BB and voice), all good stuff, I'm looking forward to it.

About the basic channel lineup:
- All the foreign language channels should be dropped. There is no reason for them and they only use up valuable analogue bandwidth. Foreigners can get a much better lineup of channels in their language from FTA satellite or even on digital cable.
- Hopefully they will standardise on the NTL Dublin lineup rather then a Chorus lineup.
- Hopefully they will standardise on NTL analogue TV prices rather then Chorus (more expensive)
- All analogue TV should be unencrypted and not need a "black box", so Chorus would need to change.
- If they have spare bandwidth for more channels then ITV2 and 4 and LivingTV might be good additions.
- All the ITV channels (1, 2 ,3 ,4) and Sky 3 should be added to Digital.
- Chorus Digital should get the NTL Digital lineup rather then the other way around.
- Chorus should get NTL pricing for digital and second digital boxes (€5).
- Lower analogue prices would certainly be welcome but also very unlikely.

BTW about other countries in Europe offering 30 - 35 analogue channels, that is not possible on the NTL network and definitely not possible on Chorus network.

Cable networks in Europe are generally capable of up to 850MHz, NTL and Chorus are at the max capable of 550Mhz at the moment. Each analogue channel uses 8MHz. It would cost a great deal to upgrade the network to 850MHz, I'd be delighted if they did, but don't waste the precise space on crappy foreign channels.

a bientot

Do note that Cork city cable subscribers have had 25 channels in analogue for years so they will have to lose some to come down to Dublin's fifteen plus the six empty ones.......plus
Setanta will have to go because only DGW have this channel........

Seriously should you want the Minister to impose further stringent conditions on UPC over and above the Competition Authority of Ireland's nineteen.......
do contact him immediately (he has a maximum of 28 days)
Micheál Martin
Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment
TD for Cork
info@entemp.ie and/or michealmartintd@eircom.net

icdg

The Competition Authority is going to have effectively its own representative on the board of UPC Ireland (which will be a renamed Princes Holdings Limited, the old Irish Multichannel holding company) - Colm Duggan of Arthur Cox accountants. Strange for a state body to have a representative on a private company's board. He'll be making sure UPC keep in line with the terms of the deal.

As for the other conditions... they are basically to make sure BSkyB and UPC don't set prices between themselves. From how I read it, no Liberty Global director who is also a director of Liberty Media, News Corporation, or British Sky Broadcasting will be allowed vote on issues which affect solely UPC Ireland or be informed about carrige discussions with BSkyB.

As for the Board of UPC Ireland, we also learn that:
· Gene Musselman (President and Chief Operating Officer, UPC)
· Robert Dunn (Chief Financial Officer, UPC)
· The Managing Director of the Irish operations (probably Phillip Freedman, possibly Mark Mohan).
· Shane O'Neill (Chief Strategy Officer Liberty Global)
· Anton Tuijten (Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Liberty
Global Europe BV)
· Colm Duggan (Arthur Cox).

are all going to be on the new Board.

bk

a bientot wrote:

Do note that Cork city cable subscribers have had 25 channels in analogue for years so they will have to lose some to come down to Dublin's fifteen plus the six empty ones.......plus
Setanta will have to go because only DGW have this channel........

Sigh, yes, but Chorus have only about 60 digital versus about 120 on NTL. About 10 digital channels take up the space of one analogue channel. So there aren't really six empty anaolgue channels on NTL, the space is used for other things like extra digital channels and BB. It is all about balance and IMO NTL has a better balance and setup.

Freddie59

a bientot wrote:

Let's move on to the substantive issue.....
Any comment from even one of the 500,000 plus customers of UPC Irlande, sorry Ireland.....
now that the sale has been given the ok by ther Competition Authority of Ireland and Mr Malone has been warned.....

I think the amount of responses to this thread adequately reflect the level of public interest in niche, minority foreign channels.:eek:

Alun

Freddie59 wrote:

I think the amount [sic] of responses to this thread adequately reflect the level of public interest in niche, minority foreign channels.:eek:

As opposed to all the niche, minority English speaking channels? One man's niche is another man's irrelevance, regardless of what language it's in. For me, all the sports channels, all the music channels, all the kids channels and all the film channels are "niches", so for me they could quite happily get rid of all these, plus probably 50% of those remaining and free up some bandwidth for things I'm interested in (which would include some foreign language channels), but then I guess I'm in a minority

BrianD

a bietot wrote:

Setanta will have to go because only DGW have this channel........

I very much doubt it. They are hardly going to ditch Ireland's third national broadcaster with valuable sports content! One hopes that UPC will upgrade the legacy systems so all types of channels can be carried. I would certainly see the value of having foreign language channels available.

rogue-entity

Well, NTL Waterford have the capacity for up to 62 analogue channels if they use the frequencies between 49-550MHz. This is in thoery, in practise using the same frequency range and adding "spacer" channels would bring this down to 30 although 25 would fit nicely enough.

The main channels that should be shown on basic Analogue are:
RTE 1
RTE 2
TV 3
TG4
(reserved for Six)
BBC 1
BBC 2
BBC 3
BBC 4
ITV 1/UTV
ITV 2
ITV 3
ITV 4
CH4
five
Sky One
Sky News
Nickelodeon
Paramount Comedy
MTV
Discovery Channel
UKTV Gold
City Channel
Local Channel
(These should be priced at 50c per channel which is €12.50, per month).

---

The basic Digital pack, priced at €25/pm, would have 30-50 channels taken from Sky and other services. You would have the digital versions of the 25 analogue channels. And the additional channels in each channel family e.g Sky 2/3, MTV2/Base/Dance etc.
You could also add other channels such as LivingTV, FX, ABC1, Challange and other channels from Sky as well as channels from other sattelites in order to carry foreign stations like Sat1, RAI 1/2/3, France 1/2/3 etc

Add a movies pack that is standardised on NTL Waterfords, Sky Movies 1-9, Cinema1/2 MGM Movies etc. (an extra €15)

Add a similar Sports pack. (an extra €10)

Extra boxes €5.

As for encrypting analogue channels, not a good idea as a lot of customers have one point in there attic and use boosters to send the signal around to the different TV's. I dont care much as long as they give me the decoder for free, in any case descrambling the channels using a computer would not take long, analogue channel encryption is easy to break, just dont do it it is illegal.

Freddie59

rogue-entity wrote:

Well, NTL Waterford have the capacity for up to 62 analogue channels if they use the frequencies between 49-550MHz. This is in thoery, in practise using the same frequency range and adding "spacer" channels would bring this down to 30 although 25 would fit nicely enough.

The main channels that should be shown on basic Analogue are:
RTE 1
RTE 2
TV 3
TG4
(reserved for Six)
BBC 1
BBC 2
BBC 3
BBC 4
ITV 1/UTV
ITV 2
ITV 3
ITV 4
CH4
five
Sky One
Sky News
Nickelodeon
Paramount Comedy
MTV
Discovery Channel
UKTV Gold
City Channel
Local Channel
(These should be priced at 50c per channel which is €12.50, per month).

---

The basic Digital pack, priced at €25/pm, would have 30-50 channels taken from Sky and other services. You would have the digital versions of the 25 analogue channels. And the additional channels in each channel family e.g Sky 2/3, MTV2/Base/Dance etc.
You could also add other channels such as LivingTV, FX, ABC1, Challange and other channels from Sky as well as channels from other sattelites in order to carry foreign stations like Sat1, RAI 1/2/3, France 1/2/3 etc

Add a movies pack that is standardised on NTL Waterfords, Sky Movies 1-9, Cinema1/2 MGM Movies etc. (an extra €15)

Add a similar Sports pack. (an extra €10)

Extra boxes €5.

As for encrypting analogue channels, not a good idea as a lot of customers have one point in there attic and use boosters to send the signal around to the different TV's. I dont care much as long as they give me the decoder for free, in any case descrambling the channels using a computer would not take long, analogue channel encryption is easy to break, just dont do it it is illegal.

I have to disagree with you there my friend. You want to reduce the price of the analogue and put more channels on it (many of the above list are rubbish) and decrease the digital and charge more??!! Not very commercially-orientated, is it? And where are you coming from with the comment about analogue encryption when all of NTLs additional services are digital??

Freddie59

Alun wrote:

As opposed to all the niche, minority English speaking channels? One man's niche is another man's irrelevance, regardless of what language it's in. For me, all the sports channels, all the music channels, all the kids channels and all the film channels are "niches", so for me they could quite happily get rid of all these, plus probably 50% of those remaining and free up some bandwidth for things I'm interested in (which would include some foreign language channels), but then I guess I'm in a minority

Well - you said it. You ARE in a minority. You see, life has a habit of the majority dictating what goes on (democracy) - TV is no different. The MAJORITY want to be entertained. The MINORITY feel they have an obligation to educate the rest of us - such as forcing foreign (non-English speaking) channels down the rest of our throats.:)

Alun

Freddie59 wrote:

Well - you said it. You ARE in a minority. You see, life has a habit of the majority dictating what goes on (democracy) - TV is no different. The MAJORITY want to be entertained.

Agreed, by their definition of entertainment. Nothing I can do about that, I agree.

The MINORITY feel they have an obligation to educate the rest of us - such as forcing foreign (non-English speaking) channels down the rest of our throats.:)

I never said that, did I? If such channels were available, you'd be no more forced to watch them, than I'd be forced to watch MTV, endless re-runs of US sitcoms I've never heard of, or bloody football (note smiley)

Anyway, it just seems to me that a lot of the channels being added at the moment are more of the same mindless crap ... I mean, Hallmark channel, what the feck is that all about? A complete waste of bandwidth. And how many people actually watch Fashion TV, for example?

Solair

The Cork Cable system may have 25 channels on analogue but it's also got the most horrible decoder known to man. The Jerrold picture destroyer 2000+

Not only does this machine mess up your pictures it makes even simple Nicam stereo a challange.

Cork should just go straight over to digital and get rid of analogue completely. Unlike in NTL's network in Dublin a set top box is required for analogue anyway so just chuck the analogue system in Cork. From an end users perspective, they'd just have a different set top box, more channels and better sound and vision quality.

15 unencrypted channels in analogue + digital tv would might actually be a big selling point. No such service has ever been available in Cork.

mike65

Alun wrote:

And how many people actually watch Fashion TV, for example?

Lingerie & Midnight Hot *cough*

Mike.

rogue-entity

Freddie59 wrote:

I have to disagree with you there my friend. You want to reduce the price of the analogue and put more channels on it (many of the above list are rubbish) and decrease the digital and charge more??!! Not very commercially-orientated, is it? And where are you coming from with the comment about analogue encryption when all of NTLs additional services are digital??

I think you misunderstood me, here is what I was proposing:

First the analogue pack:
RTE1, RTE 2, TV3, TG4, Six
BBC 1-4
Channel 4
five
ITV1-4

---

Sky One, Sky News
MTV
Discovery
Setanta Sports
E4
Paramount
Nickelodeon

---

CableText
A foreign Language station (french/german/spanish/italian)

The above channels are found on NTL Waterford, with a few additions such as the rest of the ITVs and the BBCs.
Charge between €15-30, say €20

Second the basic Digital pack. Contains the same 25 analogue channels. With at least the following additions:
Sky 2, Sky 3
The music channels on Sky (MTV2, VH1, Chart etc)
Extra News channels such as BBC News 24 and BBC World
One or two basic Movie channels such as MGM Movies, TCM, Sky Cinema 1/2
One or two basic Sports channels such as Extreme Sports, Eurosport
Any other decent channels that can be carried.
Bring the basic digital service to between 80-100 channels. Charge an extra €10 bringing the overall sub up to €30 which is not bad

Add the Sky movie channels and the film four channels and charge an extra €15, same with the sports pack. The total cost for the whole package would be €50 which is at least €15 cheaper then Sky, and without the rubbish shopping stations.

I think that this could work, it would make better use of the analogue space by adding some other channels in the available spaces, plus you attract people away from using Sky to provide the UK channels like BBC3/4, ITV2 or five.

As for my comment on the encryption of the analogue channels, I was referring to Chorus which currently encrypts the analogue stations. There is one advantage to encrypting the analogue stations, the channels could be transmitted in FM just like analogue sattelite. Bad reception would give sparklies and not snow which makes the channels more watchable when the signal is weak in an area.

bk

Solair wrote:

Cork should just go straight over to digital and get rid of analogue completely. Unlike in NTL's network in Dublin a set top box is required for analogue anyway so just chuck the analogue system in Cork. From an end users perspective, they'd just have a different set top box, more channels and better sound and vision quality.

15 unencrypted channels in analogue + digital tv would might actually be a big selling point. No such service has ever been available in Cork.

It would be a major selling point, when I moved from Cork to Dublin, I was delighted to discover that you didn't need a decoder box. I hated Chorus in Cork and like most people in Cork I was planning to change to Sky, however now I'm very happy with NTL in Dublin, it is better value for money then Sky with the analogue TV.

It is interesting to note that the churn rate for NTL:Ireland is very low (0.7%) and is in fact one of the lowest in the industry in Europe. Chorus have never released figures, but purely from talking to TV installers in Cork it is losing customers to Sky at a very high rate. NTL:Ireland being unencrypted is a major selling point for it.

BTW It is interesting to note that Chorus is pretty much moving everyone form analogue to Digital, there is only something like a €3 price difference between them and they are trying to get everyone to change over.

BBTW why do people want a (french/german/spanish/italian) channel. Surely a Chinese/Cezch/Polish/etc. channel would be of more use as they are now large numbers of people who speak these languages living in Ireland, many more then from the western European countries. IMO such foreign channels shouldn't be on analogue as it is an inefficient use of the space. Instead roughly 10 channels on digital should be foreign (one for each major language) to allow foreigners and visitors catchup on their local news. REmember one analouge channe takes the space of roughly 10 digital channels, surely this is a better use of space.

Solair

I'd say you'll see a big shake up of the cable network in Cork over few years as it has to be bleeding customers to sky digital at a huge rate.

Cork Multichannel launched that decoder system for 2 reasons. 1) It combatted people reconnecting to their network and 2) In the early and mid 1980s there were plenty of TVs out there that couldn't cope with a relatively large number of channels so the box allowed people to recieve the full range.
They also offered basic pay-per-view and ad-on premium channels from very early on.

However, technology moved on... cable-ready tvs are the norm for a long time now and it's an utter pain in the .... to have to have a seperate decoder for your tv, vcr, and any extra tvs even if you just want the most basic package of analogue channels.

If the ex-cork multichannel network went for a hybrid of 10 to 15 core analogue channels (perhaps including their own chorus sports / local stuff) with nicam stereo etc + a decent digital top-up service for everything else they'd be on to a winner.

It wouldn't even be that difficult to implement. The existing set top boxes can be instructed to simply tune to non-encrypted channels. So, for customers who didn't want to retune their TVs etc they could just stay with their preprogrammed analogue set top boxes. You could just include a message on a "barker channel" explaining the new box-free system.

Chorus also made the ridiculous mistake of narrowing the choice of cable channels on their digital platform to cut costs. They centralised all of their headend operations to Limerick, shutting down their headend in Cork etc and migrated to a single digital platform with the lowest common denominator in terms of channel numbers. i.e. the 60 channels that will fit on an MMDS system.

There's absolutely no reason why the ex-Cork Multichannel cable network can't carry a LOT more channels than MMDS on digital. It should have a service equivilant to NTL in Dublin at this stage.

UPC will hopefully have more forsight and options available.

It's also worth noting that when Chorus Digital was planned, Sky Digital wasn't quite as developed and certainly didn't have BBC1/2 nor did it have the current vast range of channels.
NTL digital hit the market later and the company had already rolled out sucessful digital platforms in the UK that didn't pin all their hopes on the availability of BBC1,2 + ITV and Channel 4.

I'd say you'll start to see a much enhanced digital cable lineup on the chorus-owned cable networks in the not to distant future. The Chorus digital platform line up is far more suited to MMDS.

icdg

We can only hope. If Chorus Digital MMDS ends up being the platform all UPC digital homes are standardised on, I will seriously contemplate getting Sky, and I bet many other NTL Digital viewers will do the same. If I were UPC I would leave all the analogue networks alone at this stage - its too late to develop them any further, and if you start messing with them you will annoy someone - and concentrate on standardising the lineups on digital. By all means give NTL Multilink viewers the Chorus Digital MMDS service - its superior in that regard - but give Chorus digital cable viewers the NTL digital cable service.

With regards Cork Communications, that network I believe was subject to a higher piracy rate than normal in Ireland, one of the major reasons for the STBs. (In fact the Irish terrestrials continued to be available in-band in the clear until the late 1990s on the Cork IMC network, and when they encrypted them eventually there was a slight bit of uproar).

Shinto

Re: Foreign language channels

I can understand how most people would want just english speaking channels on the BASIC package. I certainly wouldnt want to "force" any adult to watch a foreign language channel, but our children should be exposed to different languages from day 1 so they wont think this world is just an english speaking one. The ability to speak a foreign language is truly a great gift to give our children.

Im sure that any real Irish man would agree that TG4 has just as much of a valid place alongside RTE and those other english speaking channels on the Basic package. And so it should be with the other languages. In this age of European Unity, we should put French, Spanish, German, and Italian (no offence to other european languages, but those would be the main 4) on any basic package.

(Or if im too much of an idealist, how about a completely bespoke TV package, tailored to each persons own need. Ya, nice idea but not very likely.)

In the LONG TERM, its best for irish SOCIETY as a whole to have foreign language channels added to any basic package.

Mossy Monk

i disagree. anyone that wants foreign channels can get hundreds on satellite

rogue-entity

Mossy Monk wrote:

i disagree. anyone that wants foreign channels can get hundreds on satellite

I disagree, most people are not going to spend the extra money needed for a second receiver and another dish to receive hotbird which carries the italian channels, Astra 19.2 for the german stations and another one for the spanish channels, I dont even know where the french channels are broadcast from.
And Shinto has a point, foreign language stations do have as much right to broadcast on the basic package, just not the basic analogue packge (at least not simultaneously). The should be on the basic digital package though. NTL waterford gives you euromix in Italian, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese and Russian as well as english. On the analogue pack you get a timeshared mix of german, spanish and italian tv which is okay.

This all said, I dont watch the foreign stations because I just dont have a grasp of languages and find them dificult to learn.

Mossy Monk

rogue-entity wrote:

The should be on the basic digital package though

yeah, i'd agree with that. but i wonder how many people have asked ntl for this service

cdc

Probably not loads.
But how many asked for hallmark? Or E4+1? Or CNBC?
I suppose there was a protest website for Bloomberg before it was added?

MS NTL have added Euronews in a few languages to digital. A bit of a step but it is strictly for the language students.
The purpose of multi lingual channels is surely to give a bit of cultural diversity to try and balance all the anglo Irish channels? They would have done better to broadcast national stations from them countries instead.

Freddie59

cdc wrote:

Probably not loads.
But how many asked for hallmark? Or E4+1? Or CNBC?
I suppose there was a protest website for Bloomberg before it was added?

MS NTL have added Euronews in a few languages to digital. A bit of a step but it is strictly for the language students.
The purpose of multi lingual channels is surely to give a bit of cultural diversity to try and balance all the anglo Irish channels? They would have done better to broadcast national stations from them countries instead.

Look - yourself and some other heads have dragged this into this forum on a regular basis. The general concesus is that:

1. People are interested in entertainment, not education. As Mossy pointed out there are hundreds of foreign language channels available on satellite.

2. Analogue capacity should be used for entertainment. Not some channel that a minute section of the population can understand/want.

3. You mention Hallmark. It's an excellent general entertainment channel, and if it was a choice between that and that God-awful TV Cinq on analogue there will only be one winner everytime.

Give it a rest lads. I personally am sick of this lobbying to include these services which appeal to probably less than 0.1% of the population.

Move on lads!!:D

bk

OK, you have a choice, 1 foreign channel on analogue basic or 10 on digital.

It is stupid to put very low viewing minority channels on analogue as it is a waste of space.

I fully support putting a range for foreign channels on Digital (as long as it doesn't cost more). I would say that Asia and Eastern european languages should get preference over French, German, etc as there are actually a lot more asians and east europeans living in Ireland then French and Germans.

Really it isn't that much of a stretch for a foreigner to pay an extra €10 to get foreign channels and 100 other extra channels. Something like a third of NTL customers now use Digital.

ro2

icdg wrote:

The Competition Authority is going to have effectively its own representative on the board of UPC Ireland (which will be a renamed Princes Holdings Limited, the old Irish Multichannel holding company) - Colm Duggan of Arthur Cox accountants. Strange for a state body to have a representative on a private company's board. He'll be making sure UPC keep in line with the terms of the deal.

Colm Duggan is the main man for mergers and acquisitions in Arthur Cox (Solicitors). They represented NTL Ireland during the sale to Morgan Stanley. I wonldn't say he's a representative of the Competition Authority considering NTL/UPC effectively pay his wages.

cdc

Freddie59 wrote:

Move on

No.
& my comments were about digital, not analogue.

But if you really want to discuss analogue then you tell me CNBC is a popular entertainment channel that gets more viewers than Eurosport did.

Freddie59

cdc wrote:

No.
& my comments were about digital, not analogue.

But if you really want to discuss analogue then you tell me CNBC is a popular entertainment channel that gets more viewers than Eurosport did.

Stick to the issue in hand (foreign tv). CNBC would have more general entertainment in a half-hour than that God-awful TV Cinq. And I suppose if you want to watch monster trucks and tractor-pulling Eurosport's a good bet!!:p

Mossy Monk

when was the last time you saw Monster Trucks or Tractor Pulling on Eurosport?

seeing as it your main point about Eurosport

Freddie59

Mossy Monk wrote:

when was the last time you saw Monster Trucks or Tractor Pulling on Eurosport?

seeing as it your main point about Eurosport

Well - it would have been the last time I saw it on NTL......I don't have many fond memories of it.....remember all of us are not Sports nuts!:eek:

Mossy Monk

your opinion on Eurosport is hardly valid then

Freddie59

Mossy Monk wrote:

your opinion on Eurosport is hardly valid then

Well my understanding of these forums is that everyone can have an opinion - it might not be valid from your perspective, but others may find it agreeable. It's called free speech.:)

Mossy Monk

but when you say a channels schedule is full of tractor pulling and monster trucks, it isn't free speech. it is rubbish

cdc

CNBC is foreign tv - on a number of levels.
I would hardly class this as entertainment...
MSFT 27.59 +1.25 BRCM 28.90 -0.46 AMAT 15.91 +.31 AIG 70.24 +1.40 IBM 84.51 -0.14 CSCO 19.98 +0.20 QQQ 33.87 -0.22 QQQQ: 39.73. +.38. ORCL: 11.96. -.52. SPY: 122.03. +.28. JDSU: 2.29. +.07. ABGX: 12.90. +3.53. STIZ: 4.74. +1.74. ABGX: 12.90. +3.53. STGSZ: 18.25. +4.74. APTI: 11.68

And there is plenty of entertainment on Tv5 - music programmes, films, documentarys, even jeux sans frontiers.

icdg

Hmm. have to defend CNBC - it is rather good at what it does, business news, which some of us are interested in. Bloomberg is better when it comes to actually covering market information, but it tends to present it in a far more boring way than CNBC. And CNBC does have entertaiment programming - Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien...

Sarsfield

Hmm. have to defend TV5 - it is rather good at what it does, French language stuff, which some of us are interested in.

Freddie59

Mossy Monk wrote:

but when you say a channels schedule is full of tractor pulling and monster trucks, it isn't free speech. it is rubbish

No it isn't! Get off your high horse! The last time I saw it that sort of crap was prominent. Maybe it has improved.:D

Freddie59

cdc wrote:

CNBC is foreign tv - on a number of levels.
I would hardly class this as entertainment...
MSFT 27.59 +1.25 BRCM 28.90 -0.46 AMAT 15.91 +.31 AIG 70.24 +1.40 IBM 84.51 -0.14 CSCO 19.98 +0.20 QQQ 33.87 -0.22 QQQQ: 39.73. +.38. ORCL: 11.96. -.52. SPY: 122.03. +.28. JDSU: 2.29. +.07. ABGX: 12.90. +3.53. STIZ: 4.74. +1.74. ABGX: 12.90. +3.53. STGSZ: 18.25. +4.74. APTI: 11.68

And there is plenty of entertainment on Tv5 - music programmes, films, documentarys, even jeux sans frontiers.

Oh yeah........and all in that nice propaganda language......French!!:D

And Jeux sans Frontiers.......a throwback to the 80s........I suppose they're still showing 'Going For Gold' or whatever it's called.:eek:

cdc

With Michael Keating?
If it's still on it's likely to be original content, whereas you will probably find repeats of the BBC version on all the throw back/throw back+1 anglo american channels you can't get enough of.:p

Mossy Monk

Freddie59 wrote:

No it isn't! Get off your high horse! The last time I saw it that sort of crap was prominent. Maybe it has improved.:D

get off my high horse? i am simply pointing out to you that you know nothing about the Eurosport schedule. why comment on something you know nothing about?

Freddie59

Mossy Monk wrote:

get off my high horse? i am simply pointing out to you that you know nothing about the Eurosport schedule. why comment on something you know nothing about?

I think this is a case of 'I Hear You But I'm Not Listening' - I've already explained my views. Which part don't you understand?:)