It's owned by SES of Luxembourg. Apart from the Duchy itself, one of its major shareholders is Thames TV.
There are no 'Sky' satellites. BSkyB lease transponders on an existing satellite cluster that's owned by SES. AFAIA BSB are the only public broadcaster who have ever owned their own satellites.
By the way, an interrogative requires only one question mark. It's not an intensifier -- that is to say that two question marks doesn't make your question more questionable.
Come on, be fair. The reason that I originally wrote '"Satellite television" does not equal "Sky television", however loudly Sky's marketing machine shouts it' was because I know they shout it very loudly indeed, and the vast majority of the public fall for it and believe it to be the case.
Hm...well I don't know about you but the £100+ a year my TV licence costs me gives me 2 TV channels with no inane commercials breaking up the programmes and films (everyone I know, without exception, hates the commercials on the commercial channels and the way they wreck everything broadcast on those channels), several commercial free radio stations and access to the best collection of web sites on the Internet. If you don't mind losing 16 or so minutes of your life every hour to commercials to pay for your 'free' TV (in addition to the £20+ a month you pay for Sky TV, of course) then fine. Me, I'll just stick with the licence fee thankyou very much.
Remember, there is a finite amount of money available in the commercial sector to spend on TV advertising. If the licence fee is removed, that will remove something like £3-4 billion from the budget available to make new TV programmes and leave the commercials budget spread even thinner over the TV production budget. The commercials budget will not suddenly expand by £3-4 billion if you remove the licence fee.
More channels doesn't mean more choice, it just means less money to spend on each programme. The commercial TV channels are only interested in making profits...not good TV programmes :-)
Also the most important thing - Advertising funded Tv gets frightened of upsetting the advertisers. Watch the documentary "The Corporation" and tell me the Monsanto Milk story isn't the scariest thing you have ever seen, or look at any of Fox News coverage of the Iraq war from US TV. We are privilidged to have a TV stations that only have to answer to their viewers, and that alone is worth the license fee.
True, but as I don't watch them I didnt mention them as I was only referring to the services I personally use in exchange for my annual license fee :-)
X-No-Archive: yes In message , Kevin F Stubbs writes
It's been a constant source of wonder to me that the two TV manufacturers that I know of, Sony and Philips, who make TVs with the Freeview circuitry built in, don't make more noise about their sets. My five-year-old Philips even has a Top-Up TV card slot in the front fascia although the service in those days was the ill-fated On-Digital. Sony also provide a card slot.
Sharp also make TVs with Freeview built-in. Unfortunately, the in-set Freeview systems in all of them are less than perfect...which is why the companies don't promote them too much. They need retuning at frequent intervals to avoid annoying picture and sound break-up. Mum has a recent Sony set with this problem which causes me no end of headaches. You're better off buying an external box.
Exept for one, I said that every time they changed ther Doctor, but, having the good sense not to judge them just on the first program, I soon changed my mind, usually about the second series.
Even the BBC has taken to a few commercila breaks. Both on BBC1 & BBC3 films may be interrupted by the news, plus a few BBC program/digital/licence ads
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