Sky Force-feeding

ejmaztec

Would I be in the running for the “Arsehole of The Month Award” for criticising Sky for the way that they displayed a message on all of the channels to tell us to go to Sky News after the death of Mrs. Windsor’s mother? This is a double standard. Sky can, at the flick of a switch, stop us watching what the company considers we shouldn’t be allowed to watch yet blast our screens with information not relevant over here.
On another matter, if said “Old Lady” had been a nobody she would probably have expired about 30 years ago, forgotten in some dark corner of some UK hospital.

vampyre

Cartoon network told you to go look at CNN or a news channel.

PacMan

This is "Normal" standard when a major UK news story breaks.
When Princess Margaret died, the UK-TV channels (UK Gold/ UK Style etc) put a sign on screen informing viewers that they had to tune to BBC news 24 for an important news story. The UK-TV brand is part-owned by BBC, so a lot of cross promotion of channels is not unusual.
When the Queen Mother died all BBC radio stations joined Radio 5 Live. As for the Cartoon Channel asking viewers to tune to CNN, both of these stations are owned by AOL-Time Warner.
What Sky have done, is just inform its viewers that a breaking news story was just announced.
To be honest, the Sky News Channel is the one that normally the news station that "Breaks" these stories first. The September 11th attacks, and now the Queen Mothers death, were aired on Sky News before any other channel.
Anyhow, the BBC news coverage of the Queen Mum's death was really bad. Peter Sissions was not suitable to present a breaking news story. However Sky news did an excellent job.
Politics aside, I think the Queen Mother was a nice person and will be sadly missed.

Originally posted by PacMan
This is "Normal" standard when a major UK news story breaks.
When Princess Margaret died, the UK-TV channels (UK Gold/ UK Style etc) put a sign on screen informing viewers that they had to tune to BBC news 24 for an important news story. The UK-TV brand is part-owned by BBC, so a lot of cross promotion of channels is not unusual.
When the Queen Mother died all BBC radio stations joined Radio 5 Live. As for the Cartoon Channel asking viewers to tune to CNN, both of these stations are owned by AOL-Time Warner.
What Sky have done, is just inform its viewers that a breaking news story was just announced.
To be honest, the Sky News Channel is the one that normally the news station that "Breaks" these stories first. The September 11th attacks, and now the Queen Mothers death, were aired on Sky News before any other channel.
Anyhow, the BBC news coverage of the Queen Mum's death was really bad. Peter Sissions was not suitable to present a breaking news story. However Sky news did an excellent job.
Politics aside, I think the Queen Mother was a nice person and will be sadly missed.

I would like to make two points here:
Irrespective of anyones opinions on how nice the Queen Mother was,Sky television have no right to be informing viewers in captions on all channels on Sky digital in ROI that the Mother of the Monarch of a foreign country has died.
All interest that the Windsor family had in this country came to an end in the late 1940's when we left the commonwealth.

I thought Peter Scissons did an excelent job on that news story,he was quite poignant and on the verge of tears at times, thereby reflecting the mood of his nation.
For the record,I thought, the Queen Mum was a lovely person and very witty at times,her daughter wouldn't come across as being a patch on her.
mm

PacMan

Posted by Madman:
>>>>>>>I would like to make two points here:
Irrespective of anyones opinions on how nice the Queen Mother was,Sky television have no right to be informing viewers in captions on all channels on Sky digital in ROI that the Mother of the Monarch of a foreign country has died.>>>>>

Please read my post again. Even if the Sky Channels did not broadcast the message as you suggested it should not have, what about the other broadcasters, CNN/BBC/ITN/FOX/UK-TV etc as explained in my post?????

Posted by Madman:>>>>>>>All interest that the Windsor family had in this country came to an end in the late 1940's when we left the commonwealth>>>>>>>>>>
This is a little strong isnt it??? The same would apply to the US networks which showed the story live from London. Fox News joined with Sky News, CNN joined with ITV News, and MSNBC which was on CNBC at the time had live reports from London.I think the US did leave the rule of the UK also.:D

I dont think that Sky should have a system in place that would or should block any programmes that are deemed "Offensive" to the citizens of the Republic. The recent BBC-2 "Correspondent programme is the point in mind. What do you wish to see, a blank screen?????????
It reminds me of a story of when Prince Charles got married to Lady Diana. A large group of Welsh Republicans went to Dublin to forget about the wedding, only to find every pub/Hotel in Dublin showing live coverage of the wedding on RTE !!

CNN etc are news channels-so regardless of what state they broadcast to,it is proper order for them to be tellung us the news that the Queen Mother has died.

If the BBC interupt their programming to tell us, then thats no more than we should expect as they are mainly aimed at the UK and their schedules include news programmes.
Breaking into a "news flash" on channels like that is normal.

Sky's movie channels are a different kettle of fish-they are there for to provide us the paying ROI subscriber with a break from the real world with movie entertainment and not an adverisement for Sky News during films.

Regarding the U.S leaving the rule of the UK...channels such as fox news etc wouldn't be worth their salt if they didn't report and give coverage to this event-They are not movie channels!

My point was just that,the Death of the Mother of the Queen of a foreign country was not such an earth shattering event for Sky to interupt the viewing pleasures of it's movie channel subscribers in ROI.
I was not making the argument for blocking programmes,like Dispatches at all, just merely pointing out that we are an independent country now.I'm sure if Bertie ahern died,there wouldn't be a message flashed across the screens of Sky's movie channels in the UK?

There is a fascination and liking for the British Royal Family in ROI-there is no doubt about that and it would not surprise me if there was a lot of coverage here of the Queen Mums Funeral.
But to put it in it's proper context,the RTE news carried the Death of the Queen Mum as the third item on it's nine p.m news bulletin on saturday night-so they deemed it to be the third most important news story of the day here and I think that was about right.
The problem here of course is that we are receiving the same version of these channels as the UK and given that the majority of subscribers would be either sports or family pack here it would be impractical to change that.
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Giblet

I started getting annoyed after they showed it about 20 times.
It doesn't help when your watching subtitles.

DMC

Hmmm. Can I remind folks we subscribe to UK-based operator?

These channels biggest audience is in the UK, so it is right and proper for all their stations to interrupt programming, with either an aston or a proper newsflash that a former (wife of a) head of state, and a woman who is held in high regard by a vast majority of the population of that country, has passed on.

This is big news.

I felt Sissions got it just right too. But I do feel that they mechanisms were not in place (film clips were well prepared, live interviews two hours after the old dear died are VERY tricky...) , and a malaise of "Please God, not on my shift!" did creep in!

I don't think we should criticize the British broadcasters on this one. The Irish stations gave this story its due regard; after the Sharon vs. Arafat situation.

Hmmm...
Must pop an email off to Joe Jacob T.D
He could ask sky to have a banner going across telling us to stay indoors in the event of a nuclear accident:D
mm

PacMan

Nice one Madman:D
When I received the leaflet by post recently, I thought someone was trying an early April Fools Day joke.........
Speaking of April Fools Jokes, I thought that someone was going to start an RTE *Now* on Sky thread yesterday, being the day it was, but nothing:p

freetoair

For once I feel I have to be critical of Sky News. Don't get me wrong, I thought the queen mum was a great representative of the Royal Family, and felt with her passing away that she was possibly the last Royal who had the full respect of her subjects.

However, at the time of her passing all hell was breaking out in the middle east. It wasn't clear whether the Israeli army were going to murder Arafat or not. I was riveted to the TV as I witnessed an Egyptian TV crew come under attack. The cameraman captured the reporter being shot through the mouth !!

Then, the Queen Mum died and Sky News reverted to insular reporting. Hour after hour was blanket coverage of her life. Could they not have split that into half hour segments giving us the news every other half hour.
I had to revert to Euro news who I might add covered the middle east in great detail.

Poor performance Sky News...it was obvious you were looking for a Bafta on the Queen Mum's death.

Yeah thats true...
Although Sky did give me one fact, I didn't pick up from the BBC, although they probably mentioned it...
The Queen Mum was the last Emperoress of India.
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kilian

the queen mothers death was, in all fairness, major UK news- I don't actually have sky digital (i'm thinking of getting it) but i think you're lucky that all they did was put a message on screen, telling you to tune to a news channel. They could have stopped all broadcasting and put all channels to sky news or BBC news 24... just putting a message up isn't forcing you to watch the news!