CNBC last saturday

colinsky

Did anybody notice that CNBC was scrambled the whole day on Saturday? My whole attempt at recording Dateline overnight turned out to be one and a half hours of scramble with celine dion-like music playing along. I was contemplating calling NTL about it but didn't feel like spending two hours on hold, so I'm planning on emailing instead. What is the most effective address to email NTL?

Are they planning some station changes again that we're not going to like?

icdg

Nothing so secret...this time!

NTL have removed the seperate channel for Box Office/Premiership Plus on analogue (possibly to make more room for the digital service). Instead PPV events are being transmitted on CNBC Europe's channel. Last Saturday had a Premiership Plus match (Villa-Liverpool IIRC?) so it may have been coverage of this you saw...mind you, any football coverage should be well over by the time Dateline NBC airs late on Saturday night.

Checking the EPG (on digital, PP is a seperate channel) you should watch out for:

Sunday 12:30pm-5pm (Bolton v Villa, clashes with golf, an hour of informercials, and a relay of MSNBC)
Tuesday 6:30pm-11pm (Man Utd v Middlesborough, clashes with Frankfurt Closing Bell and relays of CNBC US programmes).

John R

The analogue premium service must be on its way out soon, as soon as the whole network is digital enabled they would be mad not to switch all the premium customers to digital.

colinsky

Sounds likely that they're being a bit casual about when they get around to switching the feeds from the event to the normal one. Perhaps they need additional weekend staff.

Incidentally, where I was living in the US previously, they so wanted to drop analogue and move everyone to digital that it was actually cheaper to sign up for basic digital service than basic analogue.

Thanks for the heads up!

Baz999

I have emailed NTL about this problem before, they have never bothered to reply.
Instead I emailed CNBC Europe on this address:
tsmith@cnbceurope.com

I was told that CNBC's legal team are trying to get NTL to stop this practice of pre-empting with pay-per-view events.

Anybody who likes CNBC's weekend programming only to see it blacked out by scrambling, would be well-advised to email CNBC, where at least you get a reply.

colinsky

It's somewhat understandable (other than the fact that the don't use Link), but NTL seem to be handling it extremely badly. When I subscribed to AT&T Cable in the states...there were times when they would preempt a channel, or (more frequently) had to take something offline for maitenance. But I can guarantee you that before that happened, every subscriber got a letter along with their previous month's bill warning them off scheduled service unavailability and providing appropriate dates and times along with a phone number to contact for more information.

Although services can "change without notice", good customer service would be more forthright to subscribers as to what they should expect for their service, and why channels they are supposedly paying for can disappear and reappear on a whim.

colinsky

Here's something I thought of over the weekend.

CNBC was made 24-hours for NTL subscribers 'cause we had an interest in more "news and current events" broadcasting. Right? But from time to time NTL wants to use the channel frequency for some other purpose -- sports events, or some other pay-per view. Still right?

So, here's a compromise. First, let us know in advance when you're going to preempt the broadcast so we don't turn in expecting to watch a show and get disappointed. That's just irresponsible and rude to your customers.

In addition... whenever you start to scramble CNBC, at the same time UNSCRAMBLE CNN. That way, we have an alternate source for the "news and current events" we want to see, without any need to rearrange channel frequncies. Later, when you switch CNBC back on, you can rescramble CNN. Everybody's happy.

Fair trade? Anyone else willing to support this proposal?

Baz999

NTL are exactly like Cablelink, - Pig-Headed. They have more analogue space available but just dont seem to want to use it.
I emailed CNBC about the PPV problem on NTL Dublin, they said they have received many similar complaints. CNBC have now made it a legal issue with NTL, and proceedings are apparently underway.
If anyone would like to let CNBC know what's happening with NTL Dublin, email CNBC's regional director Tiffany Smith tsmith@cnbceurope.com