British Television
Ah, the telly. Here in England there are a variety of choices for television. There is the plain over-the-air kind, there’s cable, and there are several satellite providers.
But before you can make the choice of providers, you have to pay your TV Licensing Fee.
Seriously.
If you have a television, you have to pay the fee, which runs about £11 per month per television. There are some arrangements for places having lots of televisions as well as concessions for older people, but for the most part, everyone has to pay the fee. The penalty for not paying the license fee can run to £1000. The license fees are then passed to the BBC to fund their operations.
But, the main point of this is to give a few small observations on the English regular broadcast television.
First, the television channels make sense, mostly. Channel one (yes, there’s a channel one here) is BBC 1. Channel two is BBC 2. Channel three is ITV1 (I’ll admit that this name is an exception to the names making sense). Channel four is named Channel Four (really). Finally, channel five is called, simply, Five.
That’s it. Certainly if you have cable or satellite, you get more choices. But for over-the-air broadcasts, this is it. Simple (with the exception of ITV1), easy, understandable.
Also, since BBC1 and BBC2 are funded by the Television License Fees and are operated by the government, there are no commercials.
In the U.S., most television programs stick to starting on the hour or half-hour. (Yes, I know that NBC sometimes plays around with their timings for some prime-time shows, but I did say ‘most.’) I remember when I was a kid, Ted Turner’s new television network, TBS, caused a big stir by scheduling everything to begin five minutes later than all the other networks: 8:05, 9:35, 11:05…you get the idea. In England, some shows start on the hour or half-hour, others don’t.
A quick look down the start times for BBC1 for today gives me this:
6:00, 9:30, 10:00, 11:00, 11:45, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 1:40, 2:05, 2:35, 3:20, 3:25, 3:40, 4:00, 4:05, 4:30, 5:00, 5:25, 5:35, 6:00, 6:30, 7:00, 10:00, 10:35, and 3:05.
(Ok, to be honest, the times are written like this: 6.00, 9.30, 10.00, and so on. There is no colon in between the hour and minutes, just a period…which is not called a period but a full stop…but I really don’t know what it’s called in this situation.)
As long as there are only five channels, I can probably adjust.
But before you can make the choice of providers, you have to pay your TV Licensing Fee.
Seriously.
If you have a television, you have to pay the fee, which runs about £11 per month per television. There are some arrangements for places having lots of televisions as well as concessions for older people, but for the most part, everyone has to pay the fee. The penalty for not paying the license fee can run to £1000. The license fees are then passed to the BBC to fund their operations.
But, the main point of this is to give a few small observations on the English regular broadcast television.
First, the television channels make sense, mostly. Channel one (yes, there’s a channel one here) is BBC 1. Channel two is BBC 2. Channel three is ITV1 (I’ll admit that this name is an exception to the names making sense). Channel four is named Channel Four (really). Finally, channel five is called, simply, Five.
That’s it. Certainly if you have cable or satellite, you get more choices. But for over-the-air broadcasts, this is it. Simple (with the exception of ITV1), easy, understandable.
Also, since BBC1 and BBC2 are funded by the Television License Fees and are operated by the government, there are no commercials.
In the U.S., most television programs stick to starting on the hour or half-hour. (Yes, I know that NBC sometimes plays around with their timings for some prime-time shows, but I did say ‘most.’) I remember when I was a kid, Ted Turner’s new television network, TBS, caused a big stir by scheduling everything to begin five minutes later than all the other networks: 8:05, 9:35, 11:05…you get the idea. In England, some shows start on the hour or half-hour, others don’t.
A quick look down the start times for BBC1 for today gives me this:
6:00, 9:30, 10:00, 11:00, 11:45, 12:30, 1:00, 1:30, 1:40, 2:05, 2:35, 3:20, 3:25, 3:40, 4:00, 4:05, 4:30, 5:00, 5:25, 5:35, 6:00, 6:30, 7:00, 10:00, 10:35, and 3:05.
(Ok, to be honest, the times are written like this: 6.00, 9.30, 10.00, and so on. There is no colon in between the hour and minutes, just a period…which is not called a period but a full stop…but I really don’t know what it’s called in this situation.)
As long as there are only five channels, I can probably adjust.
posted by Matthew Reames at 3/14/2005 07:47:00 AM
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