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Old 09-08-2014, 19:19   #1266
RichardCoulter
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Re: Coming Soon to Virgin TV (2014) Vol. 3

Quote:
Originally Posted by steveh View Post
Cable operators also had a statutory requirement to provide a local television channel, but this was dropped at some point in the nineties around the time of the big mergers.

Bell Cablemedia in East London had a scrolling information service filled with out-of-date information then for one week a year they would put out some programmes just to fulfil the legal requirements.
I never knew that! You learn something everyday

Quote:
Originally Posted by telegramsam View Post
I can remember when I was young we had Redifusion cable tv and they would flash any news from the area which needed the local people to know,i.e a flood warning.
Was this in vision or audiably? I have heard of cable companies in the past making eg flood warning announcements on top of the TV audio.

Would they do this today? Do they still have the technical capability to do so after years of consolidation?

Quote:
Originally Posted by Helix View Post
I remember on CableTel and NTL Analogue, they used to cut away from the normal adverts on channels like Nickelodeon and showed really low budget local adverts. I don't know how they were allowed to do it really as I would have thought the normal advertisers on these channels would get annoyed unless they only paid for their adverts to be shown on Sky.
Yes, I often wondered that too. Did they only do this on channels that they owned? Didn't Telewest end up with the formerly United Artists owned channels? Obviously these channels ended up being owned by VM who sold them off to Sky.

Quote:
Originally Posted by spiderplant View Post
Why do you say that?
ISTR that previous freeview periods on VM have either not happened or have started and/or ended early. The reasons given at the time were that amending the encryption was much more problematic for cable than satellite.
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