Satellite channel costs?

[eepee]

Does anyone know how much a satellite channel presence costs?

By this I mean the (presumably) channel rental and the upload/download maintenance costs - NOT the channel content.

This question is prompted by the controversy over the BBC scrapping of the over 75s freebie. By their own estimates (which are unrealistic) the scapping of the licence is less than 10% of their annual budget.

One wonders whether scrapping some (or combining) some of the channels that are doing nothing for most of the day would seriously offset the costs.

Regards,
ep

[DrBunsenHoneydew]

Does anyone know how much a satellite channel presence costs?

By this I mean the (presumably) channel rental and the upload/download maintenance costs - NOT the channel content.

This question is prompted by the controversy over the BBC scrapping of the over 75s freebie. By their own estimates (which are unrealistic) the scapping of the licence is less than 10% of their annual budget.

One wonders whether scrapping some (or combining) some of the channels that are doing nothing for most of the day would seriously offset the costs.

Regards,
ep

The costs appear to be rather trivial.
https://tvstartup.com/start-a-satellite-tv-channel-how-much-does-it-cost/

(Though I imagine there is a fair cost from Sky, Virgin to access their platform).

[AF62]

One wonders whether scrapping some (or combining) some of the channels that are doing nothing for most of the day would seriously offset the costs.

I think you would be better looking where the BBC spends some extraordinarily large sums of money -

Radio 3 which costs £39m to run but is listened to be less than 3.5% of the population (only BBC Asian Network and BBC 1xtra cost more per listened hour)
CBBC which costs an extraordinary £62m and CBeebies at £30m - £92m for kids TV - really? BBC One costs 7p per watched hour, CBBC 19p!
BBC Local and regional radio £180m - who knew Alan Partridge cost so much, but seriously, do there need to be so many.
BBC News channel (the channel not the news within the other BBC channels) - £53m and watched only by 8%

[Itsallaguess]

I think you would be better looking where the BBC spends some extraordinarily large sums of money -

Radio 3 which costs £39m to run but is listened to be less than 3.5% of the population (only BBC Asian Network and BBC 1xtra cost more per listened hour)

CBBC which costs an extraordinary £62m and CBeebies at £30m - £92m for kids TV - really? BBC One costs 7p per watched hour, CBBC 19p!

BBC Local and regional radio £180m - who knew Alan Partridge cost so much, but seriously, do there need to be so many.

BBC News channel (the channel not the news within the other BBC channels) - £53m and watched only by 8%

They're trying to compete with Amazon, Google, and Apple now -

The BBC is planning to launch a digital voice assistant next year, the corporation has announced. It will not be a hardware device in its own right but is being designed to work on all smart speakers, TVs and mobiles.

The plan is to activate it with the wake-word Beeb, although this is "a working title", a spokesman said. BBC staff around the UK are being invited to record their voices to help train the programme to recognise different accents.

Analyst Ben Wood, from CCS Insight, was among those who have expressed surprise at the news. He said he feared the BBC would find it difficult to compete with the tech giants already in this market, such as Amazon, Google and Apple.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-49481210

Why our licence-fee money is allowed to be spent on this sort of 'mission-creep' project is beyond me....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[PinkDalek]

Why our licence-fee money is allowed to be spent on this sort of 'mission-creep' project is beyond me....

Yerp, that modern iPlayer thingummy was a waste of money as well.

They should have stuck with radio.

[Howyoudoin]

Why our licence-fee money is allowed to be spent on this sort of 'mission-creep' project is beyond me....

Yerp, that modern iPlayer thingummy was a waste of money as well.

They should have stuck with radio.

Ha, very droll PD.

In my lifetime, it's never been easier to cancel your TV licence than it is now. With half a dozen big players offering 1,000s of different channels, one wonders why people continue to kick the BBC if they don't think they are getting value for money. Just cancel your licence and subscribe to another TV service.

HYD (Happy Freeviewer / Licence Payer)

[Dod101]

Radio? What is this? Wireless surely.

And HYD, it is always been very easy to cancel your TV Licence but you usually end up being fined for it especially if you continue to watch TV, (even if not BBC)

Dod

[Itsallaguess]

Yerp, that modern iPlayer thingummy was a waste of money as well.

I think the iPlayer project is a tremendous use of BBC licence-payers resources, but then again I wasn't actually talking about that...

Cheers,

Itsallaguess

[UncleEbenezer]

The plan is to activate it with the wake-word Beeb,
Itsallaguess

"Babe, show me hot pics".

(sorry, couldn't resist)

I think the iPlayer project is a tremendous use of BBC licence-payers resources,

Online contents makes sense. For the BBC to pour resources into its own proprietary delivery system absolutely doesn't. The Beeb's business is contents: it should deliver those using open standards (which it would naturally have an important role in defining - if it so chooses), and let the market develop players for it.

Just like it does with broadcast radio and television. You don't buy an iWireless or even an iGogglebox, you buy from your choice of consumer electronics suppliers to receive BBC contents!

[Julian]

Does anyone know how much a satellite channel presence costs?

By this I mean the (presumably) channel rental and the upload/download maintenance costs - NOT the channel content.

This question is prompted by the controversy over the BBC scrapping of the over 75s freebie. By their own estimates (which are unrealistic) the scapping of the licence is less than 10% of their annual budget.

One wonders whether scrapping some (or combining) some of the channels that are doing nothing for most of the day would seriously offset the costs.

Regards,
ep

The costs appear to be rather trivial.
https://tvstartup.com/start-a-satellite-tv-channel-how-much-does-it-cost/

(Though I imagine there is a fair cost from Sky, Virgin to access their platform).

I think the bit I bolded is important. I don't know the costs but as a real life example Channel 4 HD is no longer available on Freesat, you can only get the standard definition version. C4 still broadcasts the HD version un-encrypted from exactly the same satellite it always did so if one knows how to manually tune a channel on one's satellite receiver to the appropriate frequency and polarisation it is still possible to get the HD version, it is simply a case that, in about Feb this year I think, Channel 4 baulked at the price Freesat was asking to retain C4-HD's place in the Freesat electronic program guide which is why one can't see it on the EPG and has to manually tune into it. This makes C4-HD effectively unavailable to the average consumer and therein lies the value of getting the listings in the Freeview/Freesat/Virgin/Sky EPGs even for free-to-air channels.

- Julian

[Alaric]

. I don't know the costs but as a real life example Channel 4 HD is no longer available on Freesat, you can only get the standard definition version.

On a similar theme, what's happened to Channel 4 catch up? I can still access it on a computer via a browser but on a Feeesat box it's disappeared. iplayer, ITV hub, Channel 5, Netflix etc are still all present.

I cannot remember quite how long ago it was, but in the early days of catch up TV, the only way to watch it on "the big screen" was to use a computer's video output. It seems to have returned there as far as Channel 4 are concerned.

[swill453]

On a similar theme, what's happened to Channel 4 catch up? I can still access it on a computer via a browser but on a Feeesat box it's disappeared.

Yes I've noticed there isn't a catch-up section on the Android All4 app on my tablet. It used to be there.

Scott.

[Howyoudoin]

. I don't know the costs but as a real life example Channel 4 HD is no longer available on Freesat, you can only get the standard definition version.

On a similar theme, what's happened to Channel 4 catch up? I can still access it on a computer via a browser but on a Feeesat box it's disappeared. iplayer, ITV hub, Channel 5, Netflix etc are still all present.

I cannot remember quite how long ago it was, but in the early days of catch up TV, the only way to watch it on "the big screen" was to use a computer's video output. It seems to have returned there as far as Channel 4 are concerned.

Freesat viewers to lose Channel 4 HD and All4 catch-up service
https://www.techradar.com/uk/news/frees ... up-service

HYD

[AF62]

Why our licence-fee money is allowed to be spent on this sort of 'mission-creep' project is beyond me....

Not my money. I gave on the TV licence a while ago. Netflix*, Now TV, All4, ITV Hub, Channel 5 online, and UK TV Play is sufficient (*Netflix UK, USA, and Canada with a VPN). And still costs less than a TV licence.

I think the iPlayer project is a tremendous use of BBC licence-payers resources,

Online contents makes sense. For the BBC to pour resources into its own proprietary delivery system absolutely doesn't. The Beeb's business is contents: it should deliver those using open standards (which it would naturally have an important role in defining - if it so chooses), and let the market develop players for it.

Although I am no longer a consumer of BBC content, when I was the BBC iPlayer was head and shoulders above the 'commercial' versions created by ITV, Channel 4 and Five. The ITV and Five players are utterly utterly terrible and could do with a bullet in the back of their heads to put them out of their misery. All4 is not bad, but it is not a patch on the iPlayer. Only the Netflix player comes close, with some nice tricks (skip the intro, choice of language and subtitles, etc) but still isn't quite there.

On a similar theme, what's happened to Channel 4 catch up? I can still access it on a computer via a browser but on a Feeesat box it's disappeared.

Yes I've noticed there isn't a catch-up section on the Android All4 app on my tablet. It used to be there.

All4 still has catch-up on the Amazon Fire box.

[scrumpyjack]

The legal requirement for a TV licence is not dependent on whether you watch BBC. You need a licence if at any time you watch any broadcast content live, even if it is not BBC content. So watching a live sports event on Now TV still requires a TV licence.

The law really should be that you only need a licence for BBC content as over 90% of the revenue goes to them, but that is not what the law currently says.

[Dod101]

The legal requirement for a TV licence is not dependent on whether you watch BBC. You need a licence if at any time you watch any broadcast content live, even if it is not BBC content. So watching a live sports event on Now TV still requires a TV licence.

The law really should be that you only need a licence for BBC content as over 90% of the revenue goes to them, but that is not what the law currently says.

I know nothing about the various channels discussed in the above thread but Scrumpyjack's point is what I was referring to in my earlier post. Some, at least, of these broadcast channels must need a TV license for the viewer to remain legal.

Dod

[UncleEbenezer]

Online contents makes sense. For the BBC to pour resources into its own proprietary delivery system absolutely doesn't. The Beeb's business is contents: it should deliver those using open standards (which it would naturally have an important role in defining - if it so chooses), and let the market develop players for it.

Although I am no longer a consumer of BBC content, when I was the BBC iPlayer was head and shoulders above the 'commercial' versions created by ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

Right now I'm listening to BBC radio on a Sony radio. I could be listening to a different broadcaster on that same radio. Or I could be listening to the BBC - or other - on the Hitachi upstairs. Or on my Motorola phone. Or - once I've unpacked it - the ... well, you get the point. That's what a functional market in content providers and in receiving devices looks like: everything is interchangeable.

Is your BBC iWireless head and shoulders above your Philips or Grundig?

[DrFfybes]

I think the iPlayer project is a tremendous use of BBC licence-payers resources, but then again I wasn't actually talking about that...

Ging slightly off-topic, but with our internet speed we can just about watch i-player, although all that will change with the Universal Service Obligation, which has meant Openreach are replacing the 60 year old Aluminium cables in our road with Fibre.

For me the best bit about iplayer was the nod to Spinal Tap in the volume control.

Paul

[AF62]

Online contents makes sense. For the BBC to pour resources into its own proprietary delivery system absolutely doesn't. The Beeb's business is contents: it should deliver those using open standards (which it would naturally have an important role in defining - if it so chooses), and let the market develop players for it.

Although I am no longer a consumer of BBC content, when I was the BBC iPlayer was head and shoulders above the 'commercial' versions created by ITV, Channel 4 and Five.

Right now I'm listening to BBC radio on a Sony radio. I could be listening to a different broadcaster on that same radio. Or I could be listening to the BBC - or other - on the Hitachi upstairs. Or on my Motorola phone. Or - once I've unpacked it - the ... well, you get the point. That's what a functional market in content providers and in receiving devices looks like: everything is interchangeable.

Is your BBC iWireless head and shoulders above your Philips or Grundig?

So you can watch the BBC iPlayer software interface on your Sony TV or on your Hitachi TV or on your Motorola phone... Oh, that isn't what you meant with that analogy, you want the content delivered through the same software on different hardware.

Well good luck to getting ITV, Channel 4, Five, Amazon, Netflix, Sky, etc. to give up their individual apps (all of which are worse than the BBC iPlayer) and getting them to put their content on a single app (along with the BBC).

[didds]

one wonders why people continue to kick the BBC if they don't think they are getting value for money. Just cancel your licence and subscribe to another TV service.

HYD (Happy Freeviewer / Licence Payer)

Notwithstanding of course that if you watch any as-live broadcast, not just a BBc channel, on whatever device (within the UK you require a UK TV License.

<pedant mode off >

didds