Wednesday 24 August 2011

Freeview? Pah!

SkyTV offers most of the sports that the BOF wishes to watch. This, from their website today, is what they charge for it:
If you already have Sky TV, add the Sky Sports Pack for just £20.25 extra a month

This is what TopUpTV, the commercial arm of freeview, has to offer this morning:
Sky Sports 1 or 2 on their own will now be £24.99, while Sky Sports 1 and 2 together is still great value at £33.99
Quite what "great value" means under this banner is hard to tell. 2 channels for £34 compared to 4 channels for £20 indicates anything but good value. A starter package of Sky+ with Sky Sports costs £31.75 a month, still less than just 2 sports channels on Freeview.

Freeview is owned by another of those sprawling companies with an illiterate made-up name - Arqiva (sic) - as well as the terrestrial TV channels. The company's biggest shareholders are investment funds. We have, therefore, a national broadcasting system with the word free included in its name which is actually there to make a profit. Given that the government has decided that Freeview will soon be the only way to see TV other than satellite, it would be interesting to be reminded at which point we were told that the entire method of delivery of our TV systems was being privatised. The BBC used to output their own signal. Now, it appears, they are in the hands of privateers. 


Privatisation by stealth is an underhand, corrupt and damaging process. Why is there no fuss?

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