Now, where have I heard similar?

And twenty years on - freelancers still working in their 60s because Management 'forgot' to train-up replacements.

I cannot answer your question, and only made my post as it doesn't seem to be well known that Sky was in existence before News Corp ( or maybe NI) bought it. It was run for a few hours each evening from a small facilities house in London. I do not know where it was uplinked to the DTH satellite from, I seem to recall it was Europe.

Where does broadcasting start? - at the transmitter panels on the DTH satellite or at the final U-link of the premises where it is all put together. No doubt there must be a legal definition to avoid conflict, but I don't know the answer to that, perhaps someone else here does.

Except I didn't go quoting the press.

What I did was posted the details of the actual legislation which was put on the statute book.

People can decide for themselves what the legislation achieved.

I don't have a problem with unions being required to give notice of strikes and to ballot their members before strike action. In the same way I don't have a problem with employers having similar obligations to consult about changes to working practises and being required to pay a certain level of severance or compensation.

Interestingly, some seem to feel employers should have such obligations, but trade unions shouldn't - why is that?

Labour did not seem to bother to repeal all this supposedly repressive legislation brought in by Margaret Thatcher, I think some Labour people have actually said that it was needed.

I joined the ABS for a time but resigned when they were heading fast towards a strike and I had never been consulted or given chance to vote on it. I did not even know who my local union representative was.

That would not happen later after the law was changed by the Conservatives.

I remember the strike, more for a rather pompous neighbour of ours, trying to impress the close by announcing that he'd gone out and "hired a VCR".
We were all invited round for drinks, nibbles and a Clint Eastwood film. The tracking kept going a bit but I remember my old man being rather impressed

Part of the reason for confusion is that analogue satellite of the '90s came before the Television Without Frontiers EU Directive. This ossified the position that the up-linking country is responsible for licensing the service, not the target country of the owner/regulator of the satellite used.

BSB was licensed (indeed originally franchised by the IBA), it used bands allocated for DBS (Direct Broadcast by Satellite). Its broadcasts conformed to the EU requirement that all such services should use MAC (Multiplex Analogue Component)

Sky was not licensed as a broadcaster, but BT was licensed as a telecommunications operator. Sky analogue used bands set aside for telecommunications, BT uplinked the services (from London Docks); BT also leased the capacity from Astra, and supplied this on to Sky. Reception of Sky in the UK could been technically a breach of Telecommunications Acts as the Sectary of State had not licences the receivers to pick-up the broadcasts. Proving that a member of the public had received transmissions of which they were not the intended recipient (or used the information) would have been, even for the British Government, facile.

All that really happened is that Sky and various German counterparts simply stepped into an area that wasn't sufficiently regulated, and probably couldn't be regulated by an individual State. Rather than being in breach of anything Sky was just a little ahead of the curve in deploying available technology.

If the State had wanted to snuff Sky, it could have done. Sky was after all instrumental in two state concessions failing (BSB and OnDigital). Whilst the Establishment may have been wary at first, Sky did actually align with public policy in several areas where the state was deficient, notably plurality in television news and financing improvements in football grounds. Its proprietor seemed to have a better understanding of public needs than the Establishment, so better left alone.

Why was no action taken when BSB failed? The answer is simple, it was! The resultant BSkyB was a Public Limited Company, with governance obligations and institutional shareholders along-side News International. .......This was how the Establishment dealt with the Murdoch issue!

Too right Channel 4 is junk now compared to the 80's & 90's.

Generally a good post, but the bit in bold is wrong.

Sky didn't force either BSB or OnDigital out of business.

In the case of BSB it was hampered by having to go with more expensive digital technology - delays to the consumer products arriving on the shelf - where with SKY there were loads of cheap Amstrad receivers available the stock of BSB's more expensive receivers was always limited, it had a more limited channel line up with fewer attractive channels on it - don't forget SKY's package meant more than just SKY's channels.

With OnDigital - that was a financial failure caused by Granada mainly, who paid way over the odds for the lower league football rights - and not enough people were prepared to sign up. You can't really blame Sky for Granada fouling up when they tried to copy them.

BSB actually saved sky as it was loosing a lot of money and the merger actually stabalised it. As for Sky not been to blame for on Digital/ itv digital's failure, Sky paying hackers to break their encription and making the codes freely available also had something to do with it.

Does that mean that people could get a cheap OnDigital/ITVDigital box not subscribing and just get a hacked card, that was made possible due to Sky funding?

Not BSkyB directly, the allegation is against News Corp.

ITV Digital's former chief technical officer, Simon Dore, told [Panorama] that piracy was "the killer blow for the business, there is no question".

Also I was told by a Satellite/ aerial engineer that Ondigital had the "wrong frequency" as it was too close to the Govt emergency broadcast frequency or something.
He did work maintaining transmitters and said that anywhere near a military base would get no Ondigital signal.
I lived in Essex near Colchester, and sure enough there was zero service in that area.

You had to pity the poor sales guys in Currys and Comet having targets to sell Ondigital boxes, but when they checked the customer would get no service.

Freeview (as I understand) uses different frequencies that are available everywhere.

Murdoch's TV Pirates and Murdoch's TV Pirates may be of interest,

also, put "House of Ill Compute" into your favourite search engine.

Ah so thats what did it then! ITV digital was hacked out of existance and the issue of not being able to pay the football leauge, was as a result of people not signing up and paying for ITV digital and just getting it for free by hacking!

Thats odd I thought that OnDigital/ITVDigital used the same frequencies as preDSO freeview?

OnDigital / ITVDigital was transmitted from a number of main UHF stations, within the same Band IV and Band V frequencies as established, in the UK, by the UHF Plan of the 1960s.

DTT / Freeview uses a lesser number of channels within Band IV and Band V, some 'bandwidth' having been 'sold off' for 4G and other purposes.

Public digital television services in the UK, from land-based transmitter sites, have never been transmitted outside Band IV and Band V frequencies - your aerial rigger was wrong;
was he contracted to work for BSkyB?

"NDS's UK security unit was 50% funded by Sky. But the satellite broadcaster, chaired by James Murdoch, told the programme it had no involvement in how the unit was run and was not aware of Thoic"

Quote from the link you posted, not that I think it really matters if it was Sky directly, or indirectly via News Corp. The truth is if it was not a major powerful company like sky, itv would have had them in court.

Where's Alan gone?

Weren't their very early broadcasts in the mid 80's when it was sold as a pan european channel produced outside the UK?


Yes there are - I lived through the period and I , along with much of the rest of the population was sick of the unions disruption .
I was in a union for 17 years and once the closed shop ended I saw first hand the victimisation that non union members suffered.
I seem to recall reading this forum a long time ago where it seemed that you actually worked for the BBC in the 60's and 70's so its no surprise that you are biased towards the union agreements that allowed 5 people to do the work of one person .
There was a Dr Who dvd released recently - Shada I think which was the story partly shot then cancelled thanks to union interference - and there's an interesting documentary on there that gives many examples of why the unions finally got their comeuppance.
BBC4's Top of the Pops documentaries more than once have discussed the interference of the Musicians Union that tried to force all acts to record a brand new backing track on the day of performance . Some did and the quality suffered - but many lied or deceived the union rep and were able to perform their songs in the manner they wanted to rather than be dictated to by an archaic union that was only considering its own interests


BSB didn't save Sky . It was the other way round although neither were doing too well at the time.
But Sky had been round for several years and its UK service was already 12 months old when BSB started . For over a month BSB was only available on cable and less than 5 months after the satellite service started it was on the verge of collapse .
The main problem was that BSB had bid ridiculous amounts for movies and sports and couldn't sustain the service .
The merger was what allowed Sky to start Sky Sports in favour of Eurosport.


In the analogue days you had a group A or group b (or c etc) aerial that was primed for one specific set of frequencies.
For example - Sandy Heath that carries Anglia was Group A and channels ranged from C21 ( the lowest frequency) to C31.
But once digital tv started ( and even when analogue C5 started) broadcasts began on a range of frequencies not included in Group A and now they come from across the whole spectrum .
While some of the analogue frequencies of 21,27 (and 31 I think) carry a host of digital channels many of the freeview channels are on higher frequencies like C48 . Anyone who still has an old Group A aerial will find many of the freeview channels are ok but the channels on the frequencies higher up will be temperamental and pictures may break up or suffer in bad weather which is why you now need a wideband aerial so that you can receive across the whole spectrum .
I don't know for sure if this applies from every single transmitter around the country

I think what you are discribing applied to DTT pre DSO, but now they have been moved to be in the range that the analogue channels were at each transmitter, reusing the analogue channels where possible.
For example if the analogue channels were group A on a transmitter then all the DTT signals will be bettween 21-30 now.
More specifically, if the analogue channels were say 21, 24, 27 and 31 then the DTT signals will re-use 21, 24 and 27 and add in 3 more new frequencies some were bettween 21-30.
Its the same situation in groups B (now 39-51 I believe) and group C/D (now 48-60 due to the 800MHz clearance).
All areial groups can just about tune to 31-37, which is where the new com MUXs 7 and 8 for the new HD channels coming next year.
So post DSO the DTT signals are all in band still, its anones guess what OFCOM will do if they clear 700MHz though!

I was merely pointing out that before 'Sky' was purchased by the News Corporation or maybe News International, it was in existence, and was produced from a facilities house in central London. I worked with people who worked there, drank tea with those people whilst they were transmitting the programmes and indeed had a tour of the technical facilities. I don't know what types of programmes they transmitted, or what audience they were aiming at (It is only in the last 12 months that I have owned a Freesat dish) so you may be correct in thinking it was sold as a pan-European channel.

I know for a fact they haven't .
I'm in the Anglia area and at least one of our multplexes is on C48

When I subscribed to On Digital around 1999 they kindly installed a new aerial for me as part of the deal - it was the only reason I subscribed as I needed a new aerial because analogue C5 was on C39 - again it was outside Group A.

My Panasonic tv alerts me every time a new channel or retune is needed and I watch the channels load and there are quite a lot on C48 .

Do you seek to defame me, the BBC, or both?

What transmitter are you using? Is it Sandy heath? as Digital UK says it now uses channels: 21+, 24, 27, 48, 51, 52 which definately doesnt fit any areial group! This is an odd one though as most other sites have tried to fit the old analogue groupings!