All posts by Mike Dimmick
Below are all of Mike Dimmick's postings, with the most recent are at the bottom of the page.
Nick: BBC Three's viewing share was 1.3% over the week of 14-20 October. That puts it 9th, after BBC One, ITV, BBC Two, Channel 4, Channel 5, ITV 2, ITV 3 and E4. Film4 had the same share. (In BARB's figures, ITV HD is shown separately from ITV at 1.6%, but I'm including it in ITV's share.)
The weekly reach - the estimated percentage of people who watched it at all during the week - was 25.3%, putting it 7th after BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, BBC Two, Channel 5 and ITV 2.
If I were BBC Three's controller, I think I would be concerned that Family Guy takes all of the top 10 slots.
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Peter, Charles: If the Local TV services want to be received by UK viewers, they must broadcast from either SES or Eutelsat satellites at 28.2°E. Those satellites have a choice, essentially, of either a 'UK footprint' (covers the British Isles) or a pan-European footprint.
The postcode is used to look up which regional version of the EPG to use, out of about 50 different versions. Different regional versions point to different combinations of BBC One, ITV/STV/UTV (and their +1 channels), C4 and C5. (Channels 4 and 5 have no regional content but allow advertising to be bought to cover smaller regions). There are 50 regions because the BBC and the commercial channels cannot agree on the borders of each region, leaving some small areas that have, for example, ITV Border England and BBC North West rather than, for the majority of the border area of England, ITV Border England and BBC North East & Cumbria. However, the actual *broadcasts* are receivable throughout the UK and Ireland. The BBC make all variants of BBC One available in the EPGs, 951-968 on Sky and 950-967 on Freesat. For the commercial channels you have to use the Other Channels feature and enter the tuning details manually.
Historically, some ITV variants were broadcast encrypted on pan-European footprints, but 'free to view' with a Sky viewing card. Sky charge the broadcaster £25k a year for free-to-view encryption, on top of the £21k per year for an EPG slot. Grimsby TV's entire turnover is reportedly £250,000. Still, the 'UK Footprint' is in greater demand than the pan-European one, as the 28.2°E cluster predominantly serves the UK (most continental European broadcasters are on the 19.2°E cluster). If there are technical limitations on the number of transponders that can use each transmitting antenna, it could be cheaper to use the pan-European antenna and pay the encryption charges, but you'd lose the Freesat audience.
I assume that because the editorial areas for each local TV service won't necessarily correspond to Sky's or Freesat's boundaries, some services may be listed in more than one region, and some regions may list more than one Local TV service. Quite how that's going to be managed I don't know. I hope it doesn't give Sky the opportunity to fragment the region map even more, and start charging the PSBs extra for the additional combinations.
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I meant to add: you may be thinking of the 'spot' beams used by Saorsat in Ireland. These are on the Ka-Sat satellite at 9°E. A 'spot' is approximately the size of the island of Ireland - there is also a 'spot' covering most of England except the south-west, and one covering south and west England and Wales. See diagrams at Saorsat Coverage | TechTir .
As I said, this is no use to the UK local TV services as viewers' dishes are pointing to 28.2°E. Very few viewers would be willing to fit a second dish to get their local TV service. The receiver would also have to support switching to a different dish - some Freesat receivers offer the facility, through Other Channels, but Sky boxes don't.
Saorsat exists because RT feel they cannot go free-to-air on even the UK footprint. They have free-to-view channels on the UK footprint, and all Sky Ireland viewing cards can decrypt them. The UK TV market is 20x larger than the Irish, and RT would have to pay substantially more for broadcast rights, even for content originated by RT, if they were to broadcast free-to-air to the UK as well as Ireland.
For the Local TV services, it will depend on what they fill their schedules with. London Live has bought access to 150 hours of archive Channel 4 and BBC content, but then they have something like 4.5m homes in their potential market, and that content was already cleared UK-wide. Smaller services may struggle.
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P. Kieran Ward: The point of launching these new HD channels is to encourage viewers to buy DVB-T2 receivers, and aerials that cover this frequency range.
The channels will be simulcasts of the SD versions that you already have - the same content, broadcast at the same time. So you're not missing out on content if you don't have an HD receiver. There is no plan to retire the SD services yet.
The background is that Ofcom are considering an auction of even more of the TV frequencies to the mobile phone networks, in around 2018. Freeing up the block they want, approximately 700 - 800 MHz, requires the entire TV network to be replanned to fit into a smaller range of frequencies. It will be easier if many of the existing services can be converted over to the more efficient, lower bitrate AVC encoding, and the multiplexes to the more efficient, higher capacity DVB-T2 modulation. That could mean that only four or five frequencies are required at each site, rather than six. If everyone's box or TV can handle HD, the SD versions could be turned off, saving even more space.
It will only happen that way if enough people voluntarily take up Freeview HD, or move to a different platform altogether. The alternative is that one or more of the multiplexes has to be shut down, closing many of the channels. That would increase the costs paid by each of the remaining channels and could make the whole platform unviable. Arqiva, who have borrowed a large amount of money to upgrade all the transmitters for switchover, want to avoid that at all costs. That's why they hatched this plan with the BBC and Channel 4.
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@Briantist: Most US writers for TV talk about the 'third act' as the final one. I have to say I've never seen a 60-minute programme that has more than 3 acts. (The act break is very obvious when watching a DVD box set as there is a full fade to black). The spacing of the ad breaks, unfortunately, often does *not* fit into ITV/C4/C5's requirements - causing the UK broadcaster to recut the episode. The timings are also affected by the programme running 4% fast. Typically US drama is filmed at 24 frames per second, shown in the US with 3:2 pulldown telecine to convert to roughly 60 fields per second [i.e. 30 whole frames/sec], but just sped up to match Europe's 50 fields per second (25 frames).
This is a major problem when the script has obvious cliffhangers at the end of each act. It's often uncomfortable to watch an imported series on a commercial PSB or one of its 'portfolio' channels because the acts just randomly break off at the end of a scene (often with a horrible fade and not resuming sensibly after the break), and the cliffhangers have no element of suspense because they slam straight into the next scene. I particularly remember Joss Whedon's 'Dollhouse', when it eventually ended up on ITV4, being wrecked by completely inappropriate break points. (The commissioning broadcaster, Fox, was also experimenting with shorter ad breaks so the programme runs 48-49 minutes rather than the more typical 42-44.)
Your diagram is accurate in that the US typically does insert an ad break after the 'teaser' and opening titles before Act 1, and often between the final act and the closing credits roll. In contrast the UK commercial PSBs don't have a break between opening titles and the first act. (The 'teaser' or 'cold open' is becoming more common over here than it used to be, even on BBC-commissioned programmes - possibly to assist with selling the series back to the US.)
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@trevorjharris: The TV licence, because it is paid to the government*, is fundamentally always going to be a criminal offence. Civil law is for one private entity to redress harms caused by another private entity. Criminal law is for offences against the state.
However, criminal law does not automatically mean jail. The penalty for failing to have a TV licence, when one is required, attracts a maximum fine of 'level 3 on the standard scale' (currently £1000), though magistrates can use their discretion as to the level of the fine. You would only go to prison for persistent non-payment of the fine, usually after all other avenues - including direct deduction of fines from pay and/or benefits - have been exhausted. The maximum prison term is likely to be 28 days if the maximum £1000 fine was imposed, but could be shorter if the initial fine was lower. There are plenty of opportunities for someone who has inadvertently or ignorantly not got a TV licence to avoid this. It really is only people who choose to be martyred who would end up with prison time - as it should be.
The benefits of the BBC's services are experienced by the whole population, whether directly through programmes they watch or indirectly through having an educated, informed - and entertained - populace. The existence of the BBC also means that there is a ready pool of talent, both in front of the camera and behind, for the commercial broadcasters to pick from. The commercial broadcasters may not directly receive public funding, but they certainly benefit from it indirectly. On that basis, everyone should contribute to funding the services. I'm not particularly happy with the flat rate, I would prefer it to be a progressive rate with payments assessed according to ability to pay, but I believe that the general benefits would be lost if it were based on individual subscriptions.
* Yes, the BBC collects it (indirectly - outsourced to Capita), but as an agent of the government. The appropriate law directs them to pay collected fees into the government's Consolidated Fund (that is, the government's main account - same place that income tax goes). DCMS then promises, in the BBC's Agreement that accompanies the Royal Charter, to pay it over to the BBC, less administration fees and anything else that the Secretary of State chooses to deduct (with the permission of the Treasury). This convoluted procedure is, I believe, intended to keep it under the criminal law rather than civil law. (It also keeps the BBC under the government's thumb.).
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@james: It does all go to the BBC, less any administration fee - while the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is permitted to subtract any amount (with the agreement of the Treasury) I can find no evidence that this has been done.
However, the government directs the BBC (through the Agreement that accompanies the Royal Charter) to set aside funds for specific purposes. The latest Agreement requires the BBC to spend £25m on capital costs for local TV, and £5m per year on purchasing content from the local TV companies. Similarly, funding for switchover was a reservation made in the 2006 Agreement, and the broadband rollout programme is its own section of the 2011 amendment to the Agreement.
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Aerialman: The trouble is that there is no official published list of COM7 power levels. The only way to find out at present is to use Digital UK's coverage checker. I did this back in November: DUK postcode checker gives ERP's of new HD muxes - Technical - Digital Spy Forums
The information from Arqiva's Reference Offer is known to now be incorrect - it does not match the information from Digital UK (power levels are much greater).
Given that the COM7 information is different, and COM8 is not listed by Digital UK yet, COM8 should probably be removed.
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Aerialman: Ofcom should be keeping this information up to date at Ofcom | UK Digital Terrestrial Television Transmitter Frequency and Site Data , but the last update was in October. Alternatively (or additionally) it should be at Ofcom | Multiplex licensees
I presume Arqiva have actually notified Ofcom of their frequency usage and power levels, as they are required to do, it's just Ofcom being ludicrously slow in updating their documents.
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Tuesday 29 October 2013 5:45PM
Trevor Harris: <1% is sampling error. Online also fell 0.3% and DTV fell 0.1%.
'Fastest growing' is easy when you have the lowest base. It's still less than one quarter of DAB's share.
Neither platform is growing sufficiently quickly to justify a switch-off in the near future, or indeed ever. The digital TV take-up was characterised by accelerating voluntary take-up, as it 'crossed the chasm'. Digital radio - on any platform - is not showing any sign of doing so.