Campaign for BBC3, 4, News 24 and BBC Radio in Ireland.

Genghis

Could somebody please pass me the salt and pepper?

DMC

And does this have to be on a boat with the wall knocked between the dining room and the sitting room?

ShaneOC

Originally posted by DamoDMC
And does this have to be on a boat with the wall knocked between the dining room and the sitting room?

Staying out all day yesterday has turned my mush to brain

Damo too, me thinks...:)

Charles Slane

Originally posted by DamoDMC
And does this have to be on a boat with the wall knocked between the dining room and the sitting room?

LOL !! Great reference to a funny series of posts in a previous thread !!

I admit my metaphor was more than a bit dodgy. Probably due to unclear thinking because of the World Cup excitement of the last couple of weeks (not to mention drinking the occassional sherry).

Has anyone heard anything at all that might substantiate the rumours of the BBC being taken off ?

robert muldoon

I spoke to Sky this pm and he told me that he was aware of the problem with BBC interactive on the world cup but knows nothing about BBC being taken off the ROI EPG= All rumours me thinks

Originally posted by DamoDMC
And does this have to be on a boat with the wall knocked between the dining room and the sitting room?

I don't think I'll ever be let live that one down!:D
mm

SRB

As Sky are paying them for their services, Sky should insist on the interactive services in Ireland (as they should with E4 and Big Brother).

---

Charles, Sky are playing them for specific services, in this case BBC1 and BBC2 NI.
Nothing more, nothing less. As I said, would you rather they pulled them both and treated the ROI as they do everywhere else and simply broadcast World and Prime ?
Name one other country in Europe where BBC1 and BBC2 are available as part of a digi package ? In an ideal world we'd all be free to choose (isn't that a song ?) but until that day be thankful for what is available in Ireland rather than moan about what isn't !!!!
(The Christians, that's who it was) !

Charles Slane

Originally posted by SRB
Charles, Sky are playing them for specific services, in this case BBC1 and BBC2 NI.
Nothing more, nothing less. As I said, would you rather they pulled them both and treated the ROI as they do everywhere else and simply broadcast World and Prime ?
Name one other country in Europe where BBC1 and BBC2 are available as part of a digi package ? In an ideal world we'd all be free to choose (isn't that a song ?) but until that day be thankful for what is available in Ireland rather than moan about what isn't !!!!
(The Christians, that's who it was) !

Whatever happened to the Christians ?

I see your point SRB, and I certainly wouldn't want to see the channels pulled, but I think that the interactivity could be considered a fundamental element of those channels' services.

You say that Sky are paying them for BBC1 and 2 NI, nothing more and nothing less. Does this mean that we should expect to see all interactivity and digital text removed from the Irish services ?

If that were the case why would Sky publicise the interactive services in the Irish version of the Sky magazine ?

SRB

Actually, that's a good point - if the sub covers BBC1 and 2 then it should cover the interactive elements of 1 and 2. I guess though BBCi is probably a seperate entity within the BBC structure and maybe a deal to carry it would have to be concluded. It would be worth asking about though....

robert muldoon

Quote "Thank you for your email about BBC channels in the Republic of Ireland
Sky hold NO information at present regarding any future loss of broadcasting rights for these channels in ROI"
Margaret Tannock
Viewer Relations

Well I hope thats the end of that subject for the moment

irishgeo

Reply gor from BBC today about a comments posted via a form on BBC Reception website.The suggestions are my own and are written below the reply.

Dear Mr McNeela

Thank you for your e-mail. Please accept our apologies for the delay in replying. We know our correspondents appreciate a quick response and we are sorry you have had to wait on this occasion.

We are unable to expand on the statement issued on the loss of our World Cup interactive services in Ireland. A response was posted online at:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/answers.shtml#bbciireland

We are unaware of any plans to remove our services from DSAT in Ireland, all I can suggest is that you contact your digital provider.

I am pleased to read that you enjoy our services, there are no current plans to introduce more services to our Irish neighbours, however, once again, you should contact your service provider for more information.

Once again, thank you for taking the time to write.


Regards

Damian Whyte
BBC Information

---

Original Message

---

Programme title or topic:
World Cup

Network:
BBC Northern Ireland On SKY Digital

Your name:
Kevin Mc Neela

Your email address:
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Your phone number:


Whereabouts do you live?
Ireland

Your postcode:
none

How are you receiving our programmes?
satellite

Your query:
Can you tell me the exact rights issue invovlved in regards to the
withdrawing of the BBCi World cup coverage in the Republic of Ireland?

There is a rumour on the internet that BBC NI will be removed from Sky
Digital lineup in the Republic of Ireland to a contract breach in
regards to rights.Is this true?

Is there any plans to make any more BBC channels available in the
Republic of Ireland.

We would gladlly pay an extra fee for more services in the republic of
ireland. How about an add-on channel package of BBC Channels on Sky
Digital in the Republic of Ireland.

I enjoy the BBC Channels and they are a joy to watch. I am looking
forward to your reply

Sin e an Fear

Trust me, you DON'T want BBC News 24- what you want is BBC World. News 24 is all parish pump Westminster village stuff, and complete garbage. The BBC in its arrogance thinks that everyone in the UK wants this- how about in cosmopolitan London. At least with BBC World you get international coverage, European, Asia Pacific, etc.
BBC Prime is UK Gold by any other name. It orginally started out as BBC TV Europe showing a mix of BBC1 and 2, until the morons who run the Corporation decided to screw up by replacing it with archive stuff. Its subscription base has been slashed since loads of grey market viewing cards for Sky Digital are available on the Continent, and all the expats watch BBC1 and 2.

The Dutch and Belgians have had those channels for yonks because of the spillover of the signal, and makes visits to Amsterdam (!) and Brussels much more enjoyable.

The EC's 'TV Without Frontiers' Directive is a complete joke!

Originally posted by Charles Slane


Whatever happened to the Christians ?

I see your point SRB, and I certainly wouldn't want to see the channels pulled, but I think that the interactivity could be considered a fundamental element of those channels' services.

You say that Sky are paying them for BBC1 and 2 NI, nothing more and nothing less. Does this mean that we should expect to see all interactivity and digital text removed from the Irish services ?

If that were the case why would Sky publicise the interactive services in the Irish version of the Sky magazine ?

The interactivity ie BBC digital text is in no danger of being removed from ROI customers, unless it costs the BBC money to direct Irish digiboxes to it.
The only element of BBCi that we in ROI will not see is that which constitutes a repeat of Sporting fixtures for which the BBC do not have ROI rights.
Their original agreement to give us 214 and 215 obviously took account of all sporting fixtures covered by them in the normal terrestrial way.

The issue here is that the UK licence would have to fund the rights payments etc for extra services to ROI.

Incidently it seems that the reason why we have lost Big brother interactive is that if the Irish digiboxes were directed by a red button to the UK interactive screens, then anyone watching them would see the UK and not the Irish adds during the breaks-thereby losing E4 revenue.
However in my opinion, they should be investing in another mux for them as they are more than willing to take the Irish advertising money.
They are greedy:mad:
mm

carrolls

We would gladlly pay an extra fee for more services in the republic of Ireland

You've got to be kidding irishgeo, we are already paying way over the odds for BBC.
Get yourself an FTV card.

Charles Slane

Okay, I'm sick to death of this second-class customer treatment (not helped by the fact that I have the flu, or something like it !!).

This thread was started in the belief that the Sky Ireland service would improve and become more like the UK service as time went on. Instead the services are diverging even further. No Big Brother, World Cup or Wimbledon interactive services, and still no BBC radio on the EPG or BBC 4, Choice, News24, ITV, Channel 4 or Channel 5.

A lot of people on this forum have e-mailed Sky and the BBC and gotten the usual brush-offs and excuses. So maybe now it's time to extend our e-mails to include newspapers. The reason that I'm thinking along these lines is that the one thing that Sky wouldn't be happy with is any publicity of the disparity between the Irish and UK services.

I think it would fair enough to use the following newspapers to point out that we're not happy with the service currently being offered by Sky in Ireland.

What do you think ?

The following is a list of e-mail addresses of letter pages of the main Irish papers. If you have any corrections to the addresses (they may be out of date), let us know. And please post any other newspaper addresses that may be worth mailing.

sunday.letters@unison.independent.ie <sunday.letters@unison.independent.ie>

herald.letters@unison.independent.ie <herald.letters@unison.independent.ie>

independent.letters@unison.independent.ie <independent.letters@unison.independent.ie>

independent.letters@independent.ie <independent.letters@independent.ie>

info@irelandonsunday.iol.ie
<info@irelandonsunday.iol.ie>

exam_letters@examiner.ie
<exam_letters@examiner.ie>

editor@sbpost.ie
<editor@sbpost.ie>

lettersed@irish-times.ie
<lettersed@irish-times.ie>

echo.letters@cork-echo.ie
<echo.letters@cork-echo.ie>

echo.letters@limerick-echo.ie
<echo.letters@limerick-echo.ie>

Who thinks we should have a special merit award for anyone who manages to get a letter published ?

Mossy Monk

great idea. if Sky don't listen then maybe those who read newspapers will

robert muldoon

So Charles, I agree the one thing multinationals hate is negative publicity, what we need is an official response from BSkyB (IRL) NOT from somebody in the UK. Have you framed some queries for some of these newspapers?
I was in with my local Sky dealer yesterday and he told me that Sky+ MIGHT be here by Sept , no news on UTV,Channel 4
Best of luck

DMC

Definitely worth a shot, something we should have done a long time ago.

I'll get scribing one later.

Ditto.
mm

DMC

Sorry, 500th post

Charles Slane

Originally posted by DamoDMC
Sorry, 500th post

As Kramer would say ... Giddy Up !! And here's 501 !!

Here's the text of the e-mail I've sent to all the afore-mentioned e-mail addresses.

"Dear Sir or Madam,

I am writing to express my disatisfaction with Sky's Irish digital service.

Irish subscribers are paying more than their UK counterparts for an inferior service.

We don't have access to the interactive services of Big Brother, the World Cup or Wimbledon. Nor can we receive ITV, Channel 4, BBC Choice or BBC 4.

If Sky want to extend their subscriber base in Ireland, it would help if their Irish service was on a par with their UK offering.

Yours faithfully,

C. Slane"

The e-mail I sent to the Sunday Business Post bounced back, so it looks like that address is wrong. Anyone know of a new one for them ?

David C

From http://www.sbpost.ie/common/company/contact.jsp

Editorial address:
sbpost@iol.ie

Best of luck with the continued campaign everyone! With Chorus & NTL stepping up their advertising again, Sky are more likely to give in to our pressure...
We've gotten interactive Wimbeldon back at least!

Charles Slane

Originally posted by David C
From http://www.sbpost.ie/common/company/contact.jspBest of luck with the continued campaign everyone! With Chorus & NTL stepping up their advertising again, Sky are more likely to give in to our pressure...

Not only has this thread gone beyond 500 posts, but it's heading towards 25 THOUSAND views, which is amazing really.

But the most important thing about this thread and the the whole forum in general (and HUGE thanks to Ronan and Damien for facilitating a forum for us to express our opinions on everything from new digital tests, to how we feel about local Irish programming), is that it gives us an opporunity to communicate and debate, and in some way ORGANISE ourselves in our representations to the people who control what we see.

I started this thread with a dumb, idealistic vision, but it could have fallen by the wayside so easily if it hadn't been for the contributions from Madman, ShaneOC, DamoDMC, Ghenghis, Mossy Monk, irishbyte, pacman, carrolls, Irishgeo, OJ, Robert Muldoon, Richard, DMeehan, Element4, ICDG and so many others who have taken a stance against Irish viewers being treated as second-class citizens and who have furthered the debate about how we should represent ourselves through e-mail etc.

Keep up the campaign, and if you can think of any way to further the cause (ie by supplying radio station e-mail addresses, or whatever), share the info.

It's only by working together that we'll make our strength felt as consumers !!

I've spent a lot of time on the net, and I've yet to see a better forum with contributors who are more informed, intelligent, cool and (best of all) funny !!

Keep up the good work !!

Richard

Originally posted by Charles Slane

I started this thread with a dumb, idealistic vision, but it could have fallen by the wayside so easily if it hadn't been for the contributions from Madman, ShaneOC, DamoDMC, Ghenghis, Mossy Monk, irishbyte, pacman, carrolls, Irishgeo, OJ, Robert Muldoon, Richard...

Thanks for that, though I do think that in this campaign we should be very careful when saying we are hard done by.

Let's look at the Family Pack for example. It is €25 in ROI and £16 in the UK

The following are channels that ROI viewers do not get as part of the Family Pack

ITV2
E4 Big Brother Interactive

The following are channels that UK viewers do not get as part of the FP

RTE1
Network 2
TV3
TG4
BBC ONE
BBC TWO

So I think we do get a fairly good deal. Admittedly the 4 Irish channels are only nominally part of the family pack (and the value pack) but I think we ROI viewers don't get too raw a deal.

We don't pay the Uk licence fee and we do get the two BBC Channels for a knock-down price. Having said that, I would be willing to pay more for more BBC channels and features.

E4, however, which appears on the FP in both UK and ROI should really not be different between the two countries. I know that E4 ROI is on a different MUX and that ROI viewers would see the wrong ad breaks, but I am sure there is a way to kick people off during ad breaks so that they see the correct ads. This might be a small inconvenience but itäd be better than nothing. Or, since they have four feeds of the house, make one of them an ROI feed and make the service change to this feed during an ad break.

There are varous ways rounf it. I donät think Channel 4 are trying hard enough.

As for ITV/Ch4/Ch5, we don't really have a right to these channels without paying extra as theya re not ROI channels. Just because they have them in the UK doesnät mean ROI viewers should have them, especially for nothing.

Don't get me wrong in all of this. I would dearly love ROI viewers to have all the same channels/interactive services as people in the UK. But we aren't that hard done by really. 15c a month for two BBC channels is a good deal.

ShaneOC

I started this thread with a dumb, idealistic vision, but it could have fallen by the wayside so easily if it hadn't been for the contributions from Madman, ShaneOC, DamoDMC, Ghenghis, Mossy Monk, irishbyte, pacman, carrolls, Irishgeo, OJ, Robert Muldoon, Richard, DMeehan, Element4, ICDG and so many others who have taken a stance against Irish viewers being treated as second-class citizens and who have furthered the debate about how we should represent ourselves through e-mail etc.

Charles, as has been proven you are not alone in you dumb, idealistic vision.

ShaneOC

Originally posted by Richard

So I think we do get a fairly good deal. Admittedly the 4 Irish channels are only nominally part of the family pack (and the value pack) but I think we ROI viewers don't get too raw a deal.

The main reason that the four Irish channels are available on Sky is so that Sky can market themselves as an alternative multi-channel provider in this country. Most of the other service providers carry the Irish Channels so Sky were at a disadvantage.

I suspect that they are only just beginning to realise that the four main UK channels are just as important to most viewers here as the Irish ones. Every other service provider carries all four of these channels, so it is not too much to expect Sky to do the same. No-one expects to get them for nothing. I'm sure that any Chorus or NTL customers do not think that they are receiving UTV and Channel 4 for free. The service providers pay the respective channels for carriage.

The E4 issue is ridiculous. I do not think that this is entirely Sky's fault, but they could have done something about it. The problem as I see it is that the Irish E4 feed is on a different transponder to the UK one, so switching to the Irish ads while viewing interactive would be impossible. This actually sounds like a real issue and would be hard to solve, unless Channel 4 could swap another channel onto the different transponder and put the Irish E4 onto the one with the interactive. In this case it would not be too tricky to get the irish ads on at the right time. Now, if my memory serves me, Channel 4 have four film channels on the 12.168 frequency. Surely they could move one of these and put the Irish E4 in it's place.

ShaneOC

www.forumonbroadcasting.ie

Interesting little site there. There is a page of submissions. It might be an idea to draw up a document of our own and submit it. We could outline all of the little problems that we have with Sky (and broadcasting in general). Things that could be mentioned might include...

• No UTV or Channel 4
• No interactive E4
• Clarification of BBCi, specifically problems with the World Cup
• Sky's poor treatment of the Irish regarding their services (Series links on Sky One)
• No Sky+ or mirror subscription

If anyone has any other ideas post them here.

It might be a good way to publicise the ICDG site and this forum, maybe bringing a larger audience and therefore making the "guilty parties" sit up and take note.

Genghis

Thats an excellent suggestion, Shane. Anyone up for writing it?

DMC

Too late for public submissions, folks. That closed in May.

Originally posted by Richard


so I think we do get a fairly good deal. Admittedly the 4 Irish channels are only nominally part of the family pack (and the value pack) but I think we ROI viewers don't get too raw a deal.

We don't pay the Uk licence fee and we do get the two BBC Channels for a knock-down price. Having said that, I would be willing to pay more for more BBC channels and features.

E4, however, which appears on the FP in both UK and ROI should really not be different between the two countries. I know that E4 ROI is on a different MUX and that ROI viewers would see the wrong ad breaks, but I am sure there is a way to kick people off during ad breaks so that they see the correct ads. This might be a small inconvenience but itäd be better than nothing. Or, since they have four feeds of the house, make one of them an ROI feed and make the service change to this feed during an ad break.

There are varous ways rounf it. I donät think Channel 4 are trying hard enough.

As for ITV/Ch4/Ch5, we don't really have a right to these channels without paying extra as theya re not ROI channels. Just because they have them in the UK doesnät mean ROI viewers should have them, especially for nothing.

Don't get me wrong in all of this. I would dearly love ROI viewers to have all the same channels/interactive services as people in the UK. But we aren't that hard done by really. 15c a month for two BBC channels is a good deal.

Here I am like a broken record again, but with the Euro on the up.
Sky are taking in nearly 80p sterling extra since the start of the year per minimum family pack subscriber per month.
The Euro according to most economists is likely to keep that strength and grow further making Skys wind fall close to a £ per Sub.
Thats at least £2.5 million sterling in one calendar year, which they are getting free gratis, thanks to us subscribing.
They should at least give some of that back in terms of providing UTV and Ch4 and extra BBc services .
UTV seem eager to expand down here, for extra revenue, so they shouldn't look for a fee. Same applies to Ch 4.
Sky could look at solving or going some way towards solving the old rights chessnut with the Wind fall.
It's a windfall that they are getting Curtesy of their ROI customers only and means that we by default *are* worth quite a bit more to them at present.
If the Euro stays the way it is, it's extremely likely that Sky would be very happy if their Irish Subscribers weren't aware of the windfall and that we would all take another rise in subs.
Sky being a monopoly provider, of a universally available service(unlike cable) would be very likely to get away with such a move especially when not regulated here.
Theres no doubt if the currency went the other way, they would pass on the extra cost.
If they were regulated properly here, then this issue might be looked into.

And yeap, it's very naughty of E4 to be Skimping on the interacive, while at the same time taking the Irish advertising money.
mm