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Sky repeatedly rips off its customers, is it worth it?
i4u
Posts: 55,062 Forum Member
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Looking at the Festive schedules for Sky's main family entertainment channel it is serving up a miserly 21½ hours of what is described as new programming that means 96% of Sky 1 will be 96% stuffed full of repeats. At over £20 a month (£240) Sky are surely roasting their customers nuts?
Sky has more repeats than Harry Hill's TV burps.
On one day 20 Dec BBC1 alone will provided around 10 hours of what could be described as new programming.
Meanwhile on Sky 1 more than half its new programming is not in peak time and is football related leaving a paltry 10½ hours in peak time spread across 2 weeks.
On Christmas Day there is only 10 minutes of new programme, which is The Queen's Speech. On 30 Dec there are no new programmes and the highlight and only new programme on New Year's Eve are the London fireworks lasting 20 minutes.
That confirms how London centric Sky is and has it arm firmly wedged up the backside of its viewers stuffing them full of repeats so they can't get to the phone and cancel the extremely poor value £240 a year subscription.
Sky has more repeats than Harry Hill's TV burps.
On one day 20 Dec BBC1 alone will provided around 10 hours of what could be described as new programming.
Meanwhile on Sky 1 more than half its new programming is not in peak time and is football related leaving a paltry 10½ hours in peak time spread across 2 weeks.
On Christmas Day there is only 10 minutes of new programme, which is The Queen's Speech. On 30 Dec there are no new programmes and the highlight and only new programme on New Year's Eve are the London fireworks lasting 20 minutes.
That confirms how London centric Sky is and has it arm firmly wedged up the backside of its viewers stuffing them full of repeats so they can't get to the phone and cancel the extremely poor value £240 a year subscription.
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At Sky Christmas isn't a time of giving, it's more a case of taking the urine?
Well, as far as I'm aware, press gangs aren't roaming the streets forcing you to subscribe. You do have a choice...
Does it come under care in the community?
Sky would prefer you had no choice, until recently they insisted customers pay in addition for an 'entertainment' package if they wanted sport.
The question is where is the 7bn income being spent it doesn't seem to show itself on its main entertainment channel. I've no objection to people jumping off a cliff but the consequences should be pointed out to them?
Have you seen Sky reps cornering shoppers at the local mall!
People don't pay £20 for just one channel - what is paid for is the hardware, the infrastructure and the channels you get for £20, which is more than just Sky 1.
You also seem to think that showing The Queen's Speech and London NYE fireworks means that Sky is London-centric. These are two things that I think many would argue are national institutions.
As Irma Bunt pointed out, people have a choice of whether to subscribe or not.... They can also look up channel schedules online for free to see what's available and if it's what they want.... They also have the opportunity to cancel their subscription during the cooling off period (30 days I think for TV with Sky) if they find it's not what they want.
I do agree with your point that the lack of new programming is shocking - Sky aren't the only ones doing this though, but Sky 1 has taken it to the extremes. People do have a choice though, and they should really find out what they're buying before doing so?
Also, remember Sky has more than one entertainment channel - Sky 1, Sky Living, Sky Atlantic, and Sky Arts 1 all have their own original commision programming. Yes, they do have a lot of repeats, but name a channel that doesn't.
Anyway, I have a Sky subscription and I don't feel ripped off in the slightest. I can afford it, I choose to have it, and most importantly for me, I enjoy the programming I receive and choose to watch,
Wonder if they'll be any Xmas day NFL to make something decent on tv on xmas day.
Did anybody actually say that Hendero? Really?
Hey, they're only subscribing for the sport anyway.
Still, it's quite revealing that the Newspaper bile about all the repeats on the BBC is so unbalanced that it doesn't compare it with what people get with the much higher priced subscription method, eh?
He wrote this,
"And here are the scraps tossed to the TV hungry subscribers of Sky 1 by their masters... "
They still do. Game of Thrones, True Detective, The Newsroom, Hannibal, Mad Men, Olive Kitteridge, Boardwalk Empire, The Following, Elementary, The Blacklist, Blue Bloods, Ray Donovan, Banshee, Chicago Fire, Gomorrah, Matrioshki plus (since your reference to 100s of channels must include many non-Sky channels but simply on their platform) the likes of Walking Dead, Suits, Burn Notice, Falling Skies, Graceland, Rookie Blue on Fox, Universal etc
The reality is that viewing patterns are different at Christmas with a big swing to the BBC - even ITV put in less effort.
It's the easiest thing in the world to make sweeping generalisations. There is plenty of dross on the BBC as well.
Deja vu - all over again.
Many years ago I came to the same conclusion. I wrote a little app that scraped TV schedules and stuffed 'em into a database. I was then able to ascertain what programmes were new (i.e. had never been broadcast before to the UK: whether terrestrial or satellite) or not.
I was astounded by the level of repeats on satellite channels - not just on Sky, but on FX, Comedy central and the others, too.
While the BBC1, BBC2, C4 and ITV managed about 50% new material - excluding news programmes, ALL the satellite channels in Sky's basic package added about another one of the "big 4's" worth of new material in hours per week, between the lot of them.
IIRC, sometimes CC had less than 2 hours of new content in a week and FX wasn't far behind.
And then there was the question about programme quality
So a man stands in a shopping centre press ganging people to sign up to Sky? There are also people selling double glazing, solar panels, wills and all manner of things including chuggers. Do you have to buy from or donate to them — No, the choice is yours!
There are so many programmes on over the Christmas holiday period that will clash with others and with Sky+ I can watch the recordings I have on my box on Christmas Day and Boxing Day, in fact so many recorded I will be spoilt for choice, with most in HD too.
I cannot understand people on here calling Sky a rip-off. You can see what you are subscribing too, it is not a secret kept under wraps for only subscribers to see.
It is like saying an i-phone is a rip off when the only thing you would use it for is to make a phone call and you can do that with a £15 one in the local discount store that will do the same thing. Is anyone insisting you buy an i-phone just to make basic calls.
So just stop moaning and just do not subscribe, you have a choice. Sky must be doing something right as they have plenty of subscribers many staying with them many years.
It started years ago when all one read on forums were the ugly satellite dishes on peoples houses and how they would never have one on their house. Many since those days many have obviously changed their minds. In the same way when mobile phones started, nobody wanted a phone mast anywhere near them, now nearly everyone has them, they moan about not-spots and how they cannot get a signal where they live.
If you do not like what Sky offer, just do not subscribe, nobody is making you, so it cannot be classed as a rip-off.
Ones I like most are
Fox
Syfy
Discovery
Nat Geo
H2
Most the others are on freeview or free I watch.
Only really have Sky for the HD and the + and they gave me a new 2tb box free when my last one broke a few months back so might as well stay subbed till the contract runs out.
I have lots on the planner so box really does get its use.
they lied to you.
you could have opted out of the mandatory telephone connection (assuming you weren't going for multiroom).
it's no more or less than any other channel. all within the current restrictions with regards to ads.
that's the beauty, no-one is forcing anyone to subscribe to anything.
Though to get the sports and films you may have to pay more.
But for the £20. you do get little new stuff in return. Especially home produced product, which costs more an hour than imports have read in the past.
Threads like this serve to remind us how good the hated (by some) BBC LF is.
Exactly - don' t like em ? ..then fk the subsciption and use the satellite dish as a wok
One important difference being no one has to subscribe to Sky if they want to watch what's on their TVs........and on we go ;-)
I used to like documentaries, factual programme and science, and so had the Knowledge pack. However all of the discovery channels started showing scripted 'reality' programmes and passing them of as history and science. What good programmes they did have they repeated so many times I could in total fact repeat the whole script.
I now shamelessly download the few programmes I want to see.
I do agree that Sky 1 is dire and hardly a flagship channel. It's just cheap shit that costs very little to serve up to their lowest paying customers. They change more for sports and movie and then charge you more yet again if to dared to actually want it in HD.
Yes, they are out to fleece people so they are best avoided.