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Originally Posted by OLD BOY
I’m not sure where you are coming from - it’s like you are living on a different planet.
As the article says:
‘In 2024, free-to-air broadcasters and regulator Ofcom warned of a tipping point in terms of the viability of terrestrial TV broadcasts. The BBC highlighted the increasing cost of terrestrial TV per user. It also put a question mark over whether or not it could justify the ongoing expenditure.’
The article references the public’s preference to continue to broadcast terrestrially, but you ignore completely the financial issues associated with continuing to use transmitters for this purpose.
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That’s because it’s a sleight-of-hand.
There is no cost per user on terrestrial TV. It is a flat cost, regardless of how many people receive the broadcast.
Dividing it up amongst those who actually tune in, in order to create an entirely notional amount spent per user, is pointless because there are so many other factors that are within the broadcasters’ control if they want to have lower costs per user - principally, by making programmes more users want to watch.
The PSBs, the BBC most of all, have the top EPG slots and are in every home, on every platform. If they’re losing viewers they shouldn’t be helped to vanish up their own arsehoes by agreeing to switch off the distribution method your own link proves is the one viewers still want.
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It does not cost peanuts to broadcast this way as jfman supposes,
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Wrong.
Mature technology - check.
Reaches every customer - check (pretty much).
Minimal barrier to entry for consumer (in terms of cost of receiver, simplicity of technology) - check.
The cost to reach every customer - because it does reach every customer, whether or not they actually watch is another matter - is tiny.
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and the move to IP will lead to broadcasters wanting to disseminate their content through streaming only, which may or may not include streaming channels to replace existing ones. Streaming will finish off the ability for people to record shows, which is what broadcasters and content providers want, and advertisers want to prevent people from skipping over advertisements.
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That wet, squishing noise is the sound of you dragging the goalposts across a particularly soggy Sunday league football pitch and hoping everyone’s too tired or drunk to notice.
The principal protagonist here, according to the article you linked to, is the BBC, which is the backbone of UK public service broadcasting and, famously,
does not run adverts. In fact it even employs people to blur out the trademen’s business names on DIY SOS, such is its commitment to
not advertising, even on the occasions it would be rather nicer if they did.
The apparent cost to stream is so low because nobody has yet fully addressed the elephant in that room, which is that consumers are paying network operators for ‘unlimited’ internet access based on certain assumptions about average monthly data usage. I don’t know if you’re aware quite how much of a difference it makes to data usage when a household goes IP only - in the 50 days since our router was last power cycled we’ve downloaded just shy of 3 terabytes. We’re in a new-build and haven’t got round to putting an aerial up, so all our consumption is over IP. That’s what a single family doing *everything* online looks like. Push close to 2 terabytes per month on every household and the ISPs are going to start squealing, loudly, and suddenly the entire business model for the delivery of home broadband has to change. Whatever the streamers are currently paying for peering, content delivery networks and the like, doesn’t come close to covering the actual cost.
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This may seem to you to be a controversial subject, and there are still some on here who cannot even envisage this, but it doesn’t make what I have said incorrect. The advantages of broadcasting via IP is too great to be resisted.
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This is exactly what I meant when I said you think dismissing something when it doesn’t align with you opinion is not the same thing as successfully arguing against it. You might as well have just stuck your fingers in your ears and gone ‘lalala’.