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BBC One Videos: Promos

To The Manor Born, to go watch Freeview.

The BBC spruik digital (4.5mb) >> To comment and see more videos visit www.idents.tv

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It wasn’t too long ago that I showed you an ad from Digital UK introducing their mascot ‘Digit Al’ to spruik the benefits of digital television and get the minority of British households who hadn’t already jumped on the digital bandwagon to do so.

Well the BBC are at it again with their own promo, featuring some British celebrities that I can’t quite recognise talking about the benefits of switching.

How I wish the Australian digital television market hadn’t been legislatevly retarted by “the dead hands of a compliant government and too powerful media owners”, Crikey have some other good points in an article about the situation, which basically concludes that by pushing any real change back to 2012 is far too late, by which time we’ll all be downloading our shows (as if we’re not already), and commercial FTA will be screwed.

Australian’s love non-Australian content, there is nothing prolific to speak of being produced locally on commercial free to air, and with broadband not far from being in every persons house its no wonder we’re cutting out the middle man (the broadcaster), and finally taking control of when, how and what we watch on television.

2 replies on “To The Manor Born, to go watch Freeview.”

In order of appearance…

Peter Snow – general poppy-uppy presenter, such as the “swingometer” on election coverage

Ray Stubbs – BBC Sport presenter

Bill Oddie – once a Goodie, now a birdwatcher and wildlife presenter. And up a tree

Penelope Keith – The Good Life. Hasn’t been on TV for years, so goodness knows why she’s in the promo

I like the way Peter Snow makes it seem as though he personally answers the telephone if you call BBC Digital.

What Digital in Australia really needs is an incentive to switch. In the UK, you’ve got the incentive of six more BBC channels as well as ridiculous numbers from other providers. In Australia, what do you gain? Commercial channels only have EPGs. There’s also SBS World News Channel (and let’s face it, Joe Punter isn’t really interested in the latest news from Bratislava) and ABC2 (which has been shackled by genre restrictions).

These new media laws introduced by Helen Coonan will hopefully give Digital in Australia a bit of a boost – lifting of genre restrictions on ABC2 and allowing the commercials an extra digital channel each, as well as giving licences to two other digital-only channels.

I personally am hoping for ABC Parliament, so you can actually watch the House without having to contend with a ridiculously low-bandwidth stream on the Parliament site.

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