British Television

It’s rather remarkable really. There’s probably a couple of mitigating factors like there being no live football played past 7:15pm in the evening there or any real sport of note to take away viewers from those networks as well as it being too miserable outside to go out for an absolute ragedr at ‘Spoons but still, to keep that tradition of Saturday night being event TV is incredible.

I think the weather is the big thing. It’s the same reason why Christmas eve and Christmas are two of the biggest nights of TV in the UK. Could you imagine first run content on Aussie networks on those days?

Also London has shit clubbing, everywhere stops taking new entrants after midnight or 1am on even Saturday nights so there’s really no nightlife there. Not surprised that lots of people stay home.

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I was surprised how bad it was. Wonder if it’s changed with the night tube though?

Nope, still awful as of January this year :slight_smile:

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This BBC3 documentary basically explains why London’s clubbing has gone downhill. (hint: property developer$)

but back to Pres…


Channel 4 has refreshed their idents tonight, to something a little less arthouse which launched in Sept 2015. (OSP is still the same though) The theme is called FourScore which was the original ident package from its launch in 1982

Before:

After:



ITV has renewed Cold Feet for an eighth series in 2018, the third since the series reboot.

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I have recently discovered Channel 4’s 8 out of 10 Cats Does Coutdown. Love the banter and chemistry the cast have.

BBC looking at ways to open up its entire archive online via a new fee-based service. All very much big-picture proposal at this stage but will be interesting to see how it develops…

Channel 4’s purchase of rights to Great British Bake Off paid off handsomely, with the finale attracting 10 million viewers including 7 day timeshifting. It was Channel 4’s second biggest audience ever and its biggest since the 1985 drama series A Woman of Substance (13.9 million), but was lower than last year’s GBBO final when it aired on the BBC (15.9 million).

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Amazon has snatched the rights to ATP Tour tennis from Sky Sports. From 2019 to 2023, Amazon will carry live coverage of 37 events, including every top-level ATP World Tour Masters 1000 tournament and 12 of each of the 500s and 250s competitions, into UK and Ireland. It will also take the non-exclusive pay-TV rights to the season-ending Nitto ATP Finals as well as the Queen’s Club Championships and the Eastbourne International from next year.

As of 30 June this year 8,000 UK households still had a black & white television licence, with 1,596 in London. A B&W licence is £49.50 per year, and a colour licence is £147. It’s all very old fashioned and quaint. The amount that is spent enforcing the licence fee would be better spent on programs, I think, with a compulsory modest addition to income tax a better collection method rather than this separate bureaucracy.

http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/cs/media-centre/news/view.app?id=1369783627625

The BBC’s studios division and distribution arm BBC Worldwide have been merged into a single company called BBC Studios.

That is the biggest load of nonsense. 99% of those people with black and white licences are likely people who just want to get off paying the full licence fee (even though it’s likely that TV Licensing will send inspectors around to ensure you don’t have colour TV sets). You can’t just use a TV which has had the colour turned down to zero - you have to use a TV which cannot decode colour at all. So that means either you need an ancient black and white tube TV, or one of those shitty 5 inch portable black and white TVs that were sold up until about 15 years ago.

Those who are over 75 get free TV licences.

I can’t believe anyone under 75 would willingly use a black and white TV set.

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BBC One… making an effort with Christmas Idents!? With a whole year of those terrible Oneness idents, I am suprised they made the effort.





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With digital TV, how could a black and white TV work? I don’t think they’ve made any of those in years!

A set top box plugged in to the television.

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But it must be a set top box that cannot record TV (as the recording is done in colour), so that rules almost every modern set top box out (as almost all can record to a USB stick).

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But has nothing to do with the old black and white TV set which basically is just used as a monitor connected to a set top box.

Do I have to pay for a TV licence in Britain if I use a USB TV tuner for a computer?

I was under the impression that you need to pay a TV licence in Britain regardless of what devices you have to watch TV on.