I question the wisdom of ex-mandarins getting involved in things like this, but On Topic this report seems accurate and to be expected: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55714276
"Johnson 'glad' to see Trump go, says ex-Civil Service head Lord Sedwill"
Surely Sedwill, of all people, knows not to believe anything Johnson says.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
Collective amnesia is about to take hold of the Republican party and I suspect they will want any trial to be delayed and if it then occurred very short.
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
Phenomenal performance by India down under. An astonishing test series has seen a thrilling and incredible conclusion. One of the greatest test series of all time.
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
It must be over thirty years since Oz lost at Brisbane. And that was not an easy chase on an easy pitch. That was just - wow. Wow. Wow. Gill, Pujara and Pant, what a performance.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
It must be over thirty years since Oz lost at Brisbane. And that was not an easy chase on an easy pitch. That was just - wow. Wow. Wow. Gill, Pujara and Pant, what a performance.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
The EU ruling that Sky couldn't have exclusive showing of the football was one of its worst decisions ever.
Since matches remained exclusive it didn't add any competition whatsoever, it just meant instead of paying just Sky to watch sport, we either pay Sky to watch most sport and miss the rest or pay more than one company for the same bloody thing.
Competition will only exist when you can pick on which channel you want to watch the England game, or the Liverpool game etc - ie never.
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
It must be over thirty years since Oz lost at Brisbane. And that was not an easy chase on an easy pitch. That was just - wow. Wow. Wow. Gill, Pujara and Pant, what a performance.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
The EU ruling that Sky couldn't have exclusive showing of the football was one of its worst decisions ever.
Since matches remained exclusive it didn't add any competition whatsoever, it just meant instead of paying just Sky to watch sport, we either pay Sky to watch most sport and miss the rest or pay more than one company for the same bloody thing.
Competition will only exist when you can pick on which channel you want to watch the England game, or the Liverpool game etc - ie never.
Yes, that ruling simply favoured all the other media companies - but made the experience for the consumer both noticeably worse and more expensive.
As you say, competition occurs when each match is available from multiple sources, and consumers can choose which company to pay.
The other amusing fact is looking at the test numbers on the side. There's been just over 2400 test running at about 400 per decade for the last 3 decades. Half of all Tests ever played have been since 1992, that on top of ODIs and the invention of T20.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Why "of course" that Gove sucked up to Trump in 2017? Nobody made him do the interview. He was just a backbench MP so he wasn't representing HMG (where diplomatic niceties might require a degree of fawning). Remember that Murdoch (who swallowed his own doubts about Trump to become his powerful enabler via Fox) was in the room too. And Gove is Murdoch's man. Don't be fooled. Gove was making a conscious effort to normalise Trump for a UK audience at Murdoch's bidding. They wanted Trump onside to support Brexit (another Murdoch project). It was an utterly shameless and odious act. Go back and watch his performance and his own media interviews afterwards, but bring a sickbag.
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
I am not too surprised, nor at the news that some ethnic minorities are refusing here too. I know some doctors and nurses who have declined.
I expect it will be the younger age groups rather than the elderly who do not participate in the main. They are generally reluctant about any health care intervention.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Why "of course" that Gove sucked up to Trump in 2017? Nobody made him do the interview. He was just a backbench MP so he wasn't representing HMG (where diplomatic niceties might require a degree of fawning). Remember that Murdoch (who swallowed his own doubts about Trump to become his powerful enabler via Fox) was in the room too. And Gove is Murdoch's man. Don't be fooled. Gove was making a conscious effort to normalise Trump for a UK audience at Murdoch's bidding. They wanted Trump onside to support Brexit (another Murdoch project). It was an utterly shameless and odious act. Go back and watch his performance and his own media interviews afterwards, but bring a sickbag.
It’s called Realpolitik. The relationship between UK and USA transcends the temporary custodians of political office in each country. Treating Trump like he was Kim Jong-Un wouldn’t have been in the wider interests of the UK. We shall maintain a similarly cordial relationship with the next US President, after he is sworn in tomorrow.
For all the detractors of T20, and I can't say it's my favourite format of the game, India's strength in depth, resilience and ability to chase down a total really came through today.
< It’s called Realpolitik. The relationship between UK and USA transcends the temporary custodians of political office in each country. Treating Trump like he was Kim Jong-Un wouldn’t have been in the wider interests of the UK. We shall maintain a similarly cordial relationship with the next US President, after he is sworn in tomorrow.
I'm not necessarily against countries weighing up their interests with Realpolitik - everyone does. But, to take your analogy further, this was happening while Trump was treating Kim Jong-Un as though he was Boris Johnson - in fact he was more effusive about Kim. It is not in Britain's interest to tie themselves too closely to erratic leaders who will be discredited in their own countries.
A Realpolitik policy for Britain is to be friendly to the USA, the EU and traditional allies like Canada and India, and open to constructive dialogue without illusions with everyone else (yes, China, Russia and Kim Jong-Un too), while avoiding being irrationally effusive about any of them.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
I am not too surprised, nor at the news that some ethnic minorities are refusing here too. I know some doctors and nurses who have declined.
I expect it will be the younger age groups rather than the elderly who do not participate in the main. They are generally reluctant about any health care intervention.
I find the idea of potentially being treated by an unvaccinated doctor or nurse quite alarming. My understanding is that a significant number of all recorded infections actually happen in hospital. The mother of a friend of mine was in hospital, caught Covid there and died 2 days ago. She was elderly and vulnerable but to have her risk increased by unvaccinated front line staff would have been unacceptable.
I think that we are going to have to get a little less tolerant of this nonsense. There should be a range of jobs where you interact with the vulnerable where a Covid vaccination certificate is every bit as necessary as a PVG certificate.
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
Profitable as well. I had a little dabble when India were 33/1 just after midnight on Sunday - I was sure their chances were much better than that. Wish I'd put more on.
The fragmentation of TV (and film released to TV either as a matter of course or due to lockdown) is getting ridiculous. Doesn't affect me personally as I hardly ever watch it, but seeing traditional media splinter that way whilst the online world is dominated by a handful of very powerful entities is quite the contrast.
I think an exception could be sport. If the EPL or F1 makes its own streaming service and that's all it is, that could get plenty of support from fans.
But the increasing proliferation of general content provided via streaming is just increasing costs, and annoyance, for consumers.
For all the detractors of T20, and I can't say it's my favourite format of the game, India's strength in depth, resilience and ability to chase down a total really came through today.
I was "watching" on Cricinfo when the run rate went above a run a ball and the commentator wrote that was incredibly difficult in Test Cricket. The next over went for 15 (Lyon) and I just don't think that would have happened without the experience of T20. The ambit of what is possible for a batsman has expanded enormously and a scoop shot over the wicket keeper was a good example of that.
The fragmentation of TV (and film released to TV either as a matter of course or due to lockdown) is getting ridiculous. Doesn't affect me personally as I hardly ever watch it, but seeing traditional media splinter that way whilst the online world is dominated by a handful of very powerful entities is quite the contrast.
I think an exception could be sport. If the EPL or F1 makes its own streaming service and that's all it is, that could get plenty of support from fans.
But the increasing proliferation of general content provided via streaming is just increasing costs, and annoyance, for consumers.
Hopefully several of these platforms will fail and fail quickly (like ondigital / ITV Digital). The content never goes away, it just gets replatformed. Which concentrates rights back onto a more sensible basis for consumers, who don't have elastic pockets to keep paying more and more for the same thing.
We had this with music streaming. Ludicrous profiteering drove a mass of piracy. Eventually it all gets distilled down and now there are only a few main platforms which genuinely compete with each other on functionality. You don't have to have Spotify AND Apple AND Youtube to stream The Beatles as an example. Unlike Sky and BT and Prime for football.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
What football in particular needs is a pass system which allows you to watch a match on any platform for a single fee. How that fee is then divvied up amongst the broadcasters would then depend on what you watched.
We don't really want platforms or channels which are an archaic relic from the days when you let someone else decide what was on the TV. We want the content that we choose and you can keep the rest. Combining exclusive rights and old style channel based architecture has not worked to the consumer's advantage.
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Sorry to hear. Hopefully a speedy recovery being a youngster, but rest and plenty of fluids.
Whoops. Sportspeople do appear to be incapable of not meeting others, no matter how many times they get told about a nasty virus going round. So many headlines about a tournament that hasn’t even started yet, and may not go ahead at all.
F1 made the right call not to go there.
How long before the U.K. gov drops the quarantine exemption for elite sports, given the amount of positive tests they are generating?
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Bad luck Cyclefree!
My niece, who has been nursing Covid patients since the outset has now caught Covid from my sister, who she lives with. We wait with bated breath for news of the other 3 members of the household.
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Bad luck Cyclefree!
My niece, who has been nursing Covid patients since the outset has now caught Covid from my sister, who she lives with. We wait with bated breath for news of the other 3 members of the household.
I fear with the new variant the prospects of not catching Covid from people you are living with are poor. With the original version this seemed to happen quite a lot but it is now much more infectious.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
A single platform already exists - torrents. One of my students set me up with a seedbox in the Netherlands and patiently explained how to work the fucking thing 15 times until I got it.
As of Daughter's troubles are not enough, now youngest son has caught Covid from a colleague at work. He lives with brother and Dad. So they'll probably catch it too now.
Nearly a year the family has survived without catching this blasted pox and now this. FFS!
And I can't do anything but worry.
I am so fed up.
Bad luck Cyclefree!
My niece, who has been nursing Covid patients since the outset has now caught Covid from my sister, who she lives with. We wait with bated breath for news of the other 3 members of the household.
Poor Ms Cyclefree; it's just one damn thing after another. Every sympathy.
Betfair still has Trump 1.01 to leave office 2021.
His term ends by law at 12:30 on the 20th even if Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, Nancy Pelosi, Mike Pompeo, Chuck Grassley are all simultaenously assasinated.
Betfair still has Trump 1.01 to leave office 2021.
I’m going to be mad if this doesn’t pay out tomorrow, I’ve emptied my Betfair account at 1.05 down to 1.01 yesterday.
Even if there’s a civil war started overnight, or if someone takes out Biden today, there’s still going to be a swearing-in ceremony at or close to midday on 20th.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
A single platform already exists - torrents. One of my students set me up with a seedbox in the Netherlands and patiently explained how to work the fucking thing 15 times until I got it.
Trump 'furious' at the number of celebrities performing at Biden's inaugration tomorrow.
'Donald Trump is furious that so many top celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Tom Hanks, are going to feature at president-elect Joe Biden’s inaugural celebrations on Wednesday, in stark contrast to his own event four years ago.'
< It’s called Realpolitik. The relationship between UK and USA transcends the temporary custodians of political office in each country. Treating Trump like he was Kim Jong-Un wouldn’t have been in the wider interests of the UK. We shall maintain a similarly cordial relationship with the next US President, after he is sworn in tomorrow.
I'm not necessarily against countries weighing up their interests with Realpolitik - everyone does. But, to take your analogy further, this was happening while Trump was treating Kim Jong-Un as though he was Boris Johnson - in fact he was more effusive about Kim. It is not in Britain's interest to tie themselves too closely to erratic leaders who will be discredited in their own countries.
A Realpolitik policy for Britain is to be friendly to the USA, the EU and traditional allies like Canada and India, and open to constructive dialogue without illusions with everyone else (yes, China, Russia and Kim Jong-Un too), while avoiding being irrationally effusive about any of them.
Also realpolitik is applicable between governments. At the time of Gove's breathless reporting from Trump's inner sanctum he was working for Rupert Murdoch not HMG.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
When digital music first took off the market was very fragmented until universal streaming services like Spotify took over. It's not impossible that the same could end up happening with TV.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
If only we could get F1TV here. Fucking Sky block them selling it in the UK. If only we could get MUTV here - with actual live matches. Fucking Sky block them selling it in the UK.
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
I am not too surprised, nor at the news that some ethnic minorities are refusing here too. I know some doctors and nurses who have declined.
I expect it will be the younger age groups rather than the elderly who do not participate in the main. They are generally reluctant about any health care intervention.
I find the idea of potentially being treated by an unvaccinated doctor or nurse quite alarming. My understanding is that a significant number of all recorded infections actually happen in hospital. The mother of a friend of mine was in hospital, caught Covid there and died 2 days ago. She was elderly and vulnerable but to have her risk increased by unvaccinated front line staff would have been unacceptable.
I think that we are going to have to get a little less tolerant of this nonsense. There should be a range of jobs where you interact with the vulnerable where a Covid vaccination certificate is every bit as necessary as a PVG certificate.
David hi
Just to say...GET BACK ON THE WAGON!!
I read your post the other day about letting things slip a bit this time round and who can blame you (us!). But now Christmas is out of the way, and extra clothes, if necessary can be bought against the weather, it is time to get back into the regime.
Bin off the midweek booze, no snacks (sweet or savoury), and treat yourself at the weekends (otherwise you'd go mad).
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
Brexiteers and Trump supporters overlap massively in the Venn diagram.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
Brexiteers and Trump supporters overlap massively in the Venn diagram.
Brexiteers and Biden supporters overlap even more.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
If only we could get F1TV here. Fucking Sky block them selling it in the UK. If only we could get MUTV here - with actual live matches. Fucking Sky block them selling it in the UK.
Sky and F1 wouldn't be so bad if you didn't also have to the entire sky bundle to get it.
I suspect Sky will offer another F1 season ticket for £200 which I will um and err about and then just watch the C4 highlights.
Mind you I might pay to watch the first race live - so that I can see how the season will play out.
I hate to disappoint you all but it is likely India v. England starting in a few weeks is likely to be not on either Sky Sports or BT Sport.
It is likely to air on either
1) Star TV Channels (some Asian channels available on Sky)
2) Hotstar - A streaming serviced owned by Star
3) - Disney+ (but only starting with the third test onwards)
4) Amazon Prime
Basically Star own the TV rights in India, and they used to be part of Rupert Murdoch's group, but now Star are owned by Disney and Sky are owned by Comcast.
So English cricket supporters are likely to require three different subscriptions to watch England this year.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
Brexiteers and Trump supporters overlap massively in the Venn diagram.
Brexiteers and Biden supporters overlap even more.
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
It must be over thirty years since Oz lost at Brisbane. And that was not an easy chase on an easy pitch. That was just - wow. Wow. Wow. Gill, Pujara and Pant, what a performance.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
Err, I just watched it on Virgin.
And this was the last year of BT’s five year deal. The host sells the rights to the highest bidder.
Ultimately Sky have slashed their secondary rights to save their Premier League first picks. Things have calmed down a bit so Sky might try to get the Aussie rights back.
re not wanting to get treatment from someone who is not vaccinated?
Huh?
As we are aware to date, the vaccines don't affect transmission, apart from the decrease in viral load from an asymptomatic carrier (less, if any coughing, sneezing, etc).
So what is the difference between someone who has the virus, has been jabbed and is asymptomatic and someone who has the virus, hasn't been jabbed and is asymptomatic?
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
When digital music first took off the market was very fragmented until universal streaming services like Spotify took over. It's not impossible that the same could end up happening with TV.
It is impossible, Netflix was supposed to be that service of having most of everything. Then the media owners realised how much money they were leaving on the table by not having their own service. It's also why Netflix is spending billions per year on original content so they aren't beholden to studios who will withdraw the rights and launch their own platforms.
I could see one or two fall aside, Amazon prime is definitely one of those that I can't see lasting, it's a huge money black hole for returns that might never arrive and if the US gets serious about breaking Amazon up into consumer facing Amazon and corporate facing AWS then prime video is dead.
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
I am not too surprised, nor at the news that some ethnic minorities are refusing here too. I know some doctors and nurses who have declined.
I expect it will be the younger age groups rather than the elderly who do not participate in the main. They are generally reluctant about any health care intervention.
I find the idea of potentially being treated by an unvaccinated doctor or nurse quite alarming. My understanding is that a significant number of all recorded infections actually happen in hospital. The mother of a friend of mine was in hospital, caught Covid there and died 2 days ago. She was elderly and vulnerable but to have her risk increased by unvaccinated front line staff would have been unacceptable.
I think that we are going to have to get a little less tolerant of this nonsense. There should be a range of jobs where you interact with the vulnerable where a Covid vaccination certificate is every bit as necessary as a PVG certificate.
David hi
Just to say...GET BACK ON THE WAGON!!
I read your post the other day about letting things slip a bit this time round and who can blame you (us!). But now Christmas is out of the way, and extra clothes, if necessary can be bought against the weather, it is time to get back into the regime.
Bin off the midweek booze, no snacks (sweet or savoury), and treat yourself at the weekends (otherwise you'd go mad).
Keep us updated and good luck with it.
I'm trying @TOPPING , I'm trying but some virtual drink parties have rather ruined this week.
It doesn't help the pavements around here have been an ice rink for about 10 days now. Very frosty this morning again.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
Brexiteers and Trump supporters overlap massively in the Venn diagram.
Brexiteers and Biden supporters overlap even more.
I think not.
You're wrong then.
On the Venn diagram the intersection of Trump + Brexit < the intersection of Biden + Brexit.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
The PL doesn’t need to sell the games themselves. Far easier to sell to broadcasters around the world and let them sort it out.
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
It must be over thirty years since Oz lost at Brisbane. And that was not an easy chase on an easy pitch. That was just - wow. Wow. Wow. Gill, Pujara and Pant, what a performance.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
Err, I just watched it on Virgin.
And this was the last year of BT’s five year deal. The host sells the rights to the highest bidder.
Ultimately Sky have slashed their secondary rights to save their Premier League first picks. Things have calmed down a bit so Sky might try to get the Aussie rights back.
So have this winter's Ashes rights been sold?
Hopefully they go back to Sky. I'd sooner stream than pay for BT.
For all the detractors of T20, and I can't say it's my favourite format of the game, India's strength in depth, resilience and ability to chase down a total really came through today.
Economically T20 will end up consuming Test cricket. But before it does so, the skills that the players have developed playing T20 is producing the most exciting Test cricket. Enjoy it while it lasts.
Haven't seen Tiger King. Don't want to see Tiger King. Who this guy is or why he needs a pardon is beyond me.
Please, don't enlighten me
Stick to your guns. I watched it and it made nearly no impact on me. It's just stupid-people voyeurism. Very Trump-era television, but that era is now over.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
Any company that offered EVERYTHING for a monthly fee or an automatic charge per programme watched (that amounted to about the same monthly fee on average) would clean up. But I suppose that Amazon/Disney/Netflix just wouldn't agree. Personally I have a PVR with plenty of stuff recorded and can watch quality TV via BBC or free to air or what I have recorded for the price of the licence, but then I'm not bothered too much about sport.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
When digital music first took off the market was very fragmented until universal streaming services like Spotify took over. It's not impossible that the same could end up happening with TV.
It is impossible, Netflix was supposed to be that service of having most of everything. Then the media owners realised how much money they were leaving on the table by not having their own service. It's also why Netflix is spending billions per year on original content so they aren't beholden to studios who will withdraw the rights and launch their own platforms.
I could see one or two fall aside, Amazon prime is definitely one of those that I can't see lasting, it's a huge money black hole for returns that might never arrive and if the US gets serious about breaking Amazon up into consumer facing Amazon and corporate facing AWS then prime video is dead.
That would be a great shame as Amazon Prime is by an absolute mile the best of the lot.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
The PL are unlikely to launch their own channel, one of the advantages selling the rights to others is that they get the money via instalments well in advance of the season starting, and the equivalent point of the season. Put it this way they get paid in full for the season by around January.
If they went for a PL subscription model, they'd only get the money linearly throughout the season which would ruin the cashflow of most of the PL clubs.
re not wanting to get treatment from someone who is not vaccinated?
Huh?
As we are aware to date, the vaccines don't affect transmission, apart from the decrease in viral load from an asymptomatic carrier (less, if any coughing, sneezing, etc).
So what is the difference between someone who has the virus, has been jabbed and is asymptomatic and someone who has the virus, hasn't been jabbed and is asymptomatic?
This is still the unanswered trillion dollar question on which our economy depends. Can those who have been vaccinated transmit the virus even if they don't get ill themselves? If they can we are in trouble, all sorts of trouble.
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Why "of course" that Gove sucked up to Trump in 2017? Nobody made him do the interview. He was just a backbench MP so he wasn't representing HMG (where diplomatic niceties might require a degree of fawning). Remember that Murdoch (who swallowed his own doubts about Trump to become his powerful enabler via Fox) was in the room too. And Gove is Murdoch's man. Don't be fooled. Gove was making a conscious effort to normalise Trump for a UK audience at Murdoch's bidding. They wanted Trump onside to support Brexit (another Murdoch project). It was an utterly shameless and odious act. Go back and watch his performance and his own media interviews afterwards, but bring a sickbag.
It’s called Realpolitik. The relationship between UK and USA transcends the temporary custodians of political office in each country. Treating Trump like he was Kim Jong-Un wouldn’t have been in the wider interests of the UK. We shall maintain a similarly cordial relationship with the next US President, after he is sworn in tomorrow.
The next relationship will be nothing like the same. There will be no meetings arranged by Rupert Murdoch for Gove to meet Biden and others, and the backroom staff will not share the long contacts and familiarity of before. It was well beyond realpolitik, into the realm of a very public sharing of ideas, but since Gove, Murdoch and others made it so obvious and were proud of that, there's very little need even to bother arguing about it.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
The PL doesn’t need to sell the games themselves. Far easier to sell to broadcasters around the world and let them sort it out.
Possibly, but direct-to-consumer worldwide has a lot more upside for the PL and other sports rights holders, especially in the massive US market currently dominated by ESPN.
They’ve utterly failed to cut off the streamers, so giving the fans what they want - without the network middleman - is going to be their best chance to maximise revenue. The missing bit, currently provided by international networks, is foreign language commentary. Crack that, and everyone cuts the cable.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
When digital music first took off the market was very fragmented until universal streaming services like Spotify took over. It's not impossible that the same could end up happening with TV.
It is impossible, Netflix was supposed to be that service of having most of everything. Then the media owners realised how much money they were leaving on the table by not having their own service. It's also why Netflix is spending billions per year on original content so they aren't beholden to studios who will withdraw the rights and launch their own platforms.
I could see one or two fall aside, Amazon prime is definitely one of those that I can't see lasting, it's a huge money black hole for returns that might never arrive and if the US gets serious about breaking Amazon up into consumer facing Amazon and corporate facing AWS then prime video is dead.
That would be a great shame as Amazon Prime is by an absolute mile the best of the lot.
I dislike Amazon Prime, despite having an account, as it tries to get you to pay for shows on top. Watch something then it suggests something else . . . that you have to pay for, that isn't included on Prime.
I don't want to pay per episode of a TV show. Just no.
Maybe I'm just not using it right, but if it were possible to get a Prime platform that only showed what was included in Prime and hid everything else I'd probably use it more.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
When digital music first took off the market was very fragmented until universal streaming services like Spotify took over. It's not impossible that the same could end up happening with TV.
It is impossible, Netflix was supposed to be that service of having most of everything. Then the media owners realised how much money they were leaving on the table by not having their own service. It's also why Netflix is spending billions per year on original content so they aren't beholden to studios who will withdraw the rights and launch their own platforms.
I could see one or two fall aside, Amazon prime is definitely one of those that I can't see lasting, it's a huge money black hole for returns that might never arrive and if the US gets serious about breaking Amazon up into consumer facing Amazon and corporate facing AWS then prime video is dead.
That would be a great shame as Amazon Prime is by an absolute mile the best of the lot.
Its interface is dogshit, and the subtitles are practically illegible. It's not accessible for people with either visual or hearing impairments.
Does this mean that BT are going to have the exclusive rights to the Ashes this winter?
I believe so.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
It's not that difficult to use a VPN and stream it from other sites ...
Just saying.
The TV industry is shooting itself repeatedly in the head at the moment. Pay to stream is getting ridiculous, as every content provider says "I'll have a piece of that".
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
You're wrong. Unfortunately media rights for TV are becoming ever more fragmented with each major studio deciding that they want their own streaming service. The US market is a disaster because of this, they have:
Netflix Amazon prime D+ (Disney) Apple TV Peacock (NBC universal) CBS all access (Paramount) Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney) HBO Max (WB) Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
When digital music first took off the market was very fragmented until universal streaming services like Spotify took over. It's not impossible that the same could end up happening with TV.
It is impossible, Netflix was supposed to be that service of having most of everything. Then the media owners realised how much money they were leaving on the table by not having their own service. It's also why Netflix is spending billions per year on original content so they aren't beholden to studios who will withdraw the rights and launch their own platforms.
I could see one or two fall aside, Amazon prime is definitely one of those that I can't see lasting, it's a huge money black hole for returns that might never arrive and if the US gets serious about breaking Amazon up into consumer facing Amazon and corporate facing AWS then prime video is dead.
That would be a great shame as Amazon Prime is by an absolute mile the best of the lot.
I dislike Amazon Prime, despite having an account, as it tries to get you to pay for shows on top. Watch something then it suggests something else . . . that you have to pay for, that isn't included on Prime.
I don't want to pay per episode of a TV show. Just no.
Maybe I'm just not using it right, but if it were possible to get a Prime platform that only showed what was included in Prime and hid everything else I'd probably use it more.
You can set it up so you only see the free stuff, there's a "Free to me" toggle in the interface which filters out all of the premium rental/purchase stuff.
New York will be reallocating unused COVID-19 vaccines after more than ten thousand nursing home residents and nearly half of staffers declined the jab, according to Gareth Rhodes, a member of Governor Andrew Cuomo's COVID-19 Response Task Force.
I am not too surprised, nor at the news that some ethnic minorities are refusing here too. I know some doctors and nurses who have declined.
I expect it will be the younger age groups rather than the elderly who do not participate in the main. They are generally reluctant about any health care intervention.
I find the idea of potentially being treated by an unvaccinated doctor or nurse quite alarming. My understanding is that a significant number of all recorded infections actually happen in hospital. The mother of a friend of mine was in hospital, caught Covid there and died 2 days ago. She was elderly and vulnerable but to have her risk increased by unvaccinated front line staff would have been unacceptable.
I think that we are going to have to get a little less tolerant of this nonsense. There should be a range of jobs where you interact with the vulnerable where a Covid vaccination certificate is every bit as necessary as a PVG certificate.
David hi
Just to say...GET BACK ON THE WAGON!!
I read your post the other day about letting things slip a bit this time round and who can blame you (us!). But now Christmas is out of the way, and extra clothes, if necessary can be bought against the weather, it is time to get back into the regime.
Bin off the midweek booze, no snacks (sweet or savoury), and treat yourself at the weekends (otherwise you'd go mad).
Keep us updated and good luck with it.
I'm trying @TOPPING , I'm trying but some virtual drink parties have rather ruined this week.
It doesn't help the pavements around here have been an ice rink for about 10 days now. Very frosty this morning again.
Yes they are conspiring to try to podge us up. But every day is longer and (I hope) less lethally cold!
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
Brexiteers and Trump supporters overlap massively in the Venn diagram.
Brexiteers and Biden supporters overlap even more.
I think not.
You're wrong then.
On the Venn diagram the intersection of Trump + Brexit < the intersection of Biden + Brexit.
Wasn't there a Yougov poll that had Leave voters splitting about 60/40 in favour of Biden? There's no doubt Leave voters are more likely to favour Trump than Remain voters, but most still preferred Biden.
By and large, I'd say the UK's approach to the US in recent years has been quite correct; we maintain friendly relations with whoever is in charge. Trump was not this country's enemy, and neither is Biden.
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
Idiotic article.The opposite is true.The striking thing about the Tory Right is how few apart from Farage and the journalist Delingpole endorsed Trump to any degree .Inevitable that Cabinet Ministers had to put govt business first.Of course Gove gave a sycophantic interview in january 2017 - what else was he supposed to given the timing? When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Yes, Gove is just a victim of circumstance. There was literally no way for him to avoid flying 3,500 miles and crawling up Trump's backside.
Brexiteers and Trump supporters overlap massively in the Venn diagram.
In a slightly different world, Germany's centre-right CDU would be the most natural match as a foreign political party for the Conservative party. Unfortunately the Conservative party isn't really a centre-right party. I guess more Brexiters prefer Trump to Merkel than vice versa.
Conversely, it is sometimes odd how keen UK leftwingers are to praise right-winger Merkel.
I think some in the Conservative party are upset with Trump only for exposing the true nature of the Republican Party, a party they otherwise admire.
re not wanting to get treatment from someone who is not vaccinated?
Huh?
As we are aware to date, the vaccines don't affect transmission, apart from the decrease in viral load from an asymptomatic carrier (less, if any coughing, sneezing, etc).
So what is the difference between someone who has the virus, has been jabbed and is asymptomatic and someone who has the virus, hasn't been jabbed and is asymptomatic?
This is still the unanswered trillion dollar question on which our economy depends. Can those who have been vaccinated transmit the virus even if they don't get ill themselves? If they can we are in trouble, all sorts of trouble.
No trial or test has been done to say they don't. But there is much less coughing and sneezing so with that decrease in viral load transmission the virus will gradually die out.
It was weird, but I'm still surprised they've apologised. The BBC has apologised for the original headline in its reporting of the death of the convicted murderer Phil Spector.
The first version on the breaking news story on the BBC News website carried the headline: "Talented but flawed producer Phil Spector dies aged 81".
All over Down Under. Described as one of India's greatest wins.
It must be over thirty years since Oz lost at Brisbane. And that was not an easy chase on an easy pitch. That was just - wow. Wow. Wow. Gill, Pujara and Pant, what a performance.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
While we're doing stats, England's win was the first time since the 1950s that they've won four overseas tests on the trot.
Comments
When the House of Commons in 2016/ 2017 had a debate on whether President Trump should be able to come to the UK only a handful of Tory MPs spoke in favour of Trump.It has been noticeable how on mainstream TV so many Tory journalists tried to distance themselves from being linked to Trump on a personal level even if being sympathetic to some of his policies
Collective amnesia is about to take hold of the Republican party and I suspect they will want any trial to be delayed and if it then occurred very short.
15 required from five overs, all three results still very much possible.
Phenomenal performance by India down under. An astonishing test series has seen a thrilling and incredible conclusion. One of the greatest test series of all time.
Edit - and BT TV are officially bastards for having the exclusive rights so nobody in the UK could watch it.
Since matches remained exclusive it didn't add any competition whatsoever, it just meant instead of paying just Sky to watch sport, we either pay Sky to watch most sport and miss the rest or pay more than one company for the same bloody thing.
Competition will only exist when you can pick on which channel you want to watch the England game, or the Liverpool game etc - ie never.
The bowler who did the chief damage is no longer alive.
https://www.espncricinfo.com/series/west-indies-tour-of-australia-1988-89-61901/australia-vs-west-indies-1st-test-63496/full-scorecard
List of tests:
https://stats.espncricinfo.com/australia/engine/records/team/match_results.html?class=1;id=209;type=ground
That is just extraordinary.
Stupid, stupid decision. Even worse than taking it off Free to Air in the first place.
I might view it differently had it been decided that the rights for at least some matches had to be free to air, but they didn’t do that.
As you say, competition occurs when each match is available from multiple sources, and consumers can choose which company to pay.
Just saying.
That 1988 Test was #1108 vs today's #2404
Don't be fooled. Gove was making a conscious effort to normalise Trump for a UK audience at Murdoch's bidding. They wanted Trump onside to support Brexit (another Murdoch project). It was an utterly shameless and odious act. Go back and watch his performance and his own media interviews afterwards, but bring a sickbag.
I expect it will be the younger age groups rather than the elderly who do not participate in the main. They are generally reluctant about any health care intervention.
Tragic.
A Realpolitik policy for Britain is to be friendly to the USA, the EU and traditional allies like Canada and India, and open to constructive dialogue without illusions with everyone else (yes, China, Russia and Kim Jong-Un too), while avoiding being irrationally effusive about any of them.
Put content up on Sky or Netflix for a rights fee? No, lets launch our own platform and keep all the revenue! So the question is how much £ can punters stump up. I pay for BBC, Virgin Media, Netflix, Disney, Prime. I'm on the free trial of Britbox and did the same for Apple TV. I am forced to "borrow" a friend's connection to watch stuff on Sky. Sports fans may need Sky Sports AND BT Sport AND Prime just to cover football.
Which is why, as you point out, pirate VPN streaming is so popular. Once we move north in a few weeks we'll review our packages, but it is frustrating and increasingly unsustainable for yet more things to be put behind yet another bloody paywall. One paywall to rule them all would be fine. But there isn't one. Rights have gone all over the place.
Let me give you an example. Shitbox claims to have all classic British TV in one place. Its clear that they have assembled them from a variety of sources - watching Cracker the aspect ratio jumps from original 4:3 to cropped widescreen to 4:3 within a 3 part story. And classics like Hi-De-Hi? They have the odd episode, but the streaming rights are held by Amazon. Not for free to Prime subscribers, on a pay per season basis.
It is unsustainable. People object to the license fee for understandable reasons and that will have to go. As will the plethora of salami sliced platforms - people will stop paying the money for the stuff they don't have to have, Britbox etc will fail, and content will start coalescing around A platform. Same with Football - one pay platform not three which each at the same price as the original one platform used to be.
I think that we are going to have to get a little less tolerant of this nonsense. There should be a range of jobs where you interact with the vulnerable where a Covid vaccination certificate is every bit as necessary as a PVG certificate.
The fragmentation of TV (and film released to TV either as a matter of course or due to lockdown) is getting ridiculous. Doesn't affect me personally as I hardly ever watch it, but seeing traditional media splinter that way whilst the online world is dominated by a handful of very powerful entities is quite the contrast.
I think an exception could be sport. If the EPL or F1 makes its own streaming service and that's all it is, that could get plenty of support from fans.
But the increasing proliferation of general content provided via streaming is just increasing costs, and annoyance, for consumers.
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1351414461794435072
We had this with music streaming. Ludicrous profiteering drove a mass of piracy. Eventually it all gets distilled down and now there are only a few main platforms which genuinely compete with each other on functionality. You don't have to have Spotify AND Apple AND Youtube to stream The Beatles as an example. Unlike Sky and BT and Prime for football.
We don't really want platforms or channels which are an archaic relic from the days when you let someone else decide what was on the TV. We want the content that we choose and you can keep the rest. Combining exclusive rights and old style channel based architecture has not worked to the consumer's advantage.
Careful segregation within the house too.
Best wishes.
F1 made the right call not to go there.
How long before the U.K. gov drops the quarantine exemption for elite sports, given the amount of positive tests they are generating?
My niece, who has been nursing Covid patients since the outset has now caught Covid from my sister, who she lives with. We wait with bated breath for news of the other 3 members of the household.
https://twitter.com/TheSun/status/1351443116126052359
https://twitter.com/TheTweetOfJohn/status/1351383093580423168
Arise President Mnuchin !
Even if there’s a civil war started overnight, or if someone takes out Biden today, there’s still going to be a swearing-in ceremony at or close to midday on 20th.
Netflix
Amazon prime
D+ (Disney)
Apple TV
Peacock (NBC universal)
CBS all access (Paramount)
Hulu (Fox, owned by Disney)
HBO Max (WB)
Bravia Core (SPE/Columbia launching in March)
This is coming here too and the market will become more fragmented, not less.
What's interesting is that for sports rights I could see the PL selling their own subscription package soon, maybe £250 per season for all of the televised matches. F1 already does this with F1TV and there's no monopoly concerns. With football to match the income that the PL gets from Sky/BT they would need around 6m subscribers at £250 per season. It also opens up models such as choosing which club you support and having a proportion of your subscription go to them, I know something like that has been looked at previously.
'Donald Trump is furious that so many top celebrities, including Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez and Tom Hanks, are going to feature at president-elect Joe Biden’s inaugural celebrations on Wednesday, in stark contrast to his own event four years ago.'
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-biden-inauguration-furious-celebrities-b1789192.html
If only we could get MUTV here - with actual live matches. Fucking Sky block them selling it in the UK.
Just to say...GET BACK ON THE WAGON!!
I read your post the other day about letting things slip a bit this time round and who can blame you (us!). But now Christmas is out of the way, and extra clothes, if necessary can be bought against the weather, it is time to get back into the regime.
Bin off the midweek booze, no snacks (sweet or savoury), and treat yourself at the weekends (otherwise you'd go mad).
Keep us updated and good luck with it.
Please, don't enlighten me
I suspect Sky will offer another F1 season ticket for £200 which I will um and err about and then just watch the C4 highlights.
Mind you I might pay to watch the first race live - so that I can see how the season will play out.
It is likely to air on either
1) Star TV Channels (some Asian channels available on Sky)
2) Hotstar - A streaming serviced owned by Star
3) - Disney+ (but only starting with the third test onwards)
4) Amazon Prime
Basically Star own the TV rights in India, and they used to be part of Rupert Murdoch's group, but now Star are owned by Disney and Sky are owned by Comcast.
So English cricket supporters are likely to require three different subscriptions to watch England this year.
And this was the last year of BT’s five year deal. The host sells the rights to the highest bidder.
Ultimately Sky have slashed their secondary rights to save their Premier League first picks. Things have calmed down a bit so Sky might try to get the Aussie rights back.
Huh?
As we are aware to date, the vaccines don't affect transmission, apart from the decrease in viral load from an asymptomatic carrier (less, if any coughing, sneezing, etc).
So what is the difference between someone who has the virus, has been jabbed and is asymptomatic and someone who has the virus, hasn't been jabbed and is asymptomatic?
https://twitter.com/RishiSunak/status/1351437411860045824?s=20
I could see one or two fall aside, Amazon prime is definitely one of those that I can't see lasting, it's a huge money black hole for returns that might never arrive and if the US gets serious about breaking Amazon up into consumer facing Amazon and corporate facing AWS then prime video is dead.
It doesn't help the pavements around here have been an ice rink for about 10 days now. Very frosty this morning again.
On the Venn diagram the intersection of Trump + Brexit < the intersection of Biden + Brexit.
Hopefully they go back to Sky. I'd sooner stream than pay for BT.
Personally I have a PVR with plenty of stuff recorded and can watch quality TV via BBC or free to air or what I have recorded for the price of the licence, but then I'm not bothered too much about sport.
If they went for a PL subscription model, they'd only get the money linearly throughout the season which would ruin the cashflow of most of the PL clubs.
They’ve utterly failed to cut off the streamers, so giving the fans what they want - without the network middleman - is going to be their best chance to maximise revenue. The missing bit, currently provided by international networks, is foreign language commentary. Crack that, and everyone cuts the cable.
I don't want to pay per episode of a TV show. Just no.
Maybe I'm just not using it right, but if it were possible to get a Prime platform that only showed what was included in Prime and hid everything else I'd probably use it more.
Turns out it is real.
Carole Fucking Baskin.
By and large, I'd say the UK's approach to the US in recent years has been quite correct; we maintain friendly relations with whoever is in charge. Trump was not this country's enemy, and neither is Biden.
Conversely, it is sometimes odd how keen UK leftwingers are to praise right-winger Merkel.
I think some in the Conservative party are upset with Trump only for exposing the true nature of the Republican Party, a party they otherwise admire.
Is the (PB at least) theory.
While we're doing stats, England's win was the first time since the 1950s that they've won four overseas tests on the trot.