Originally Posted by soulboy77:
“Well to be fair Freesat have had a run of adverts on TV recently but they haven't gone as far as telling people to junk their subscriptions and I suspect Sky would complain if they did, because of the BBC's involvement.
As far as getting more channels to join we have to acknowledge the difficulties Freesat face. With a few exceptions most of the FTA channels not on Freesat are small budget channels and they simply cannot afford to be on Freesat as well as Sky because they would not recoup the extra cost in advert revenue (as the percentage increase in viewers would be relatively tiny). Many of the encrypted channels that are part of a Sky sub have the problem of having to satisfy the programme rights holders and cannot do this if they go FTA because of the footprint of the satellite they are on. Also some channels by remaining exclusive to Sky get paid more as part of their contract.
If Freesat can continue to shift boxes then their argument starts to become easier and if they can get near to a number similar to Virgin Media's customer base then I'm sure a number of channels will sit up and take notice.”
Originally Posted by M60:
“I've not seen any Freesat ads for a while, presumably they've been concentrating on your area with DSO just completed etc?
I do wonder how much Sky pay UKTV for channels such as Dave, Really and Yesterday when these are all available FTA on the main UK platform, wonder whether exclusivity pays more in terms of sub fees? Any channel joining Sky's pay line-up may not now be able to go FTA elsewhere so presumably this is a prior arrangement and maybe Dave doesn't give the same subscription kickback payment as does, say, Alibi, Blighty, Gold, Eden etc. We'll never know as we won't see a contract but is interesting, certainly it looks like HD-wise 5HD is in an exclusivity deal for Sky (and VM) as they couldn't go on to Freeview until this summer.
I was watching a programme on Pick TV last night, apart from the odd ad, most of the ad breaks are filled with Sky 1 promos, plus ads for Sky Sports upgrades, it's basically their mouthpiece for selling Sky subs (together with Challenge although not watched much of that yet).
I've never had Freeview although can get all the multiplexes, went for Freesat instead and as these channels weren't available I've never missed them - probably still wouldn't if they weren't FTA.”
Indeed guys. There have been quite a lot Freeview adverts on TV recently and Freesat need to up their game in terms of quantity and quality of adverts.
It's a chicken and egg thing - the more good advertising there is then the more customers they'll get and the more likely it is that more, new channels will come to Freesat. However, they've got to start the ball rolling themselves.
. I believe the mediaportal plugin also allows some series linking.
seeing us get all excited (nearly 11,000 views for this thread) 