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Availability of other national broadcasters

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CO
Coronavision

Let me just ask: are there any variations in ads between different ITV regions?


Yes, but they are rendered somewhat redundant by the HD channels that play out commercials for companies in Staffordshire to viewers living not far from Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Not *that* close - viewers in Scotland would be watching STV. I get your point though.


Border Scotland does go fairly far north into Scotland though.
MA
Markymark

Well, ITV are the same here, because they don't want you watching the 'wrong' ads .


Let me just ask: are there any variations in ads between different ITV regions?


Yes, but they are rendered somewhat redundant by the HD channels that play out commercials for companies in Staffordshire to viewers living not far from Glasgow and Edinburgh.


Not a problem for ITV HD, as they are buried down the EPG, away from their intuitive positions where they are not the correct region, so no one (other than people like us) are watching
IS
Inspector Sands

Let me just ask: are there any variations in ads between different ITV regions?


Yes, but they are rendered somewhat redundant by the HD channels that play out commercials for companies in Staffordshire to viewers living not far from Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Could be worse, Channel 4 HD often has London ads on it and is a single service for the UK
TH
Thinker
(*) I believe that SVT, NRK and DR showing each others' programmes is done via the normal routes of programme acquisition (where you pay to buy a show). It is possible that SVT, NRK and DR have a mutual scheme to 'swap' shows that is effectively the same as buying and selling but doesn't include financial transactions - though I'm not aware of such a deal and I would have thought it was difficult to implement when it comes to archive, stills, music and talent rights.


The Nordic public broadcasters have a long-standing agreement making much of their in-house productions available to each other for free. It's called Nordvision (a bit like Eurovision, but with fewer countries and deeper cooperation):

https://www.nordvision.org/om-about/english/

The Nordic broadcasters realised early on that free exchange of programming was better than having to sell to each other.

Another part of this cooperation is that the fees each broadcaster collects for retransmission in other Nordic countries is pooled into the "Nordvision Fund", which helps finance expensive programming like drama.

As for general availability of neighbouring channels on cable, it is largely determined by what customers expect. When cable was rolled out in the 80s, SVT became nationally available in Norway in Denmark, but NRK and DR were only available in the parts of Sweden that were close to Norway or Denmark. With the switch to digital cable, NRK and DR have largely been relegated to special add-on packages in Sweden, while SVT and TV4 are available in basic packages in Norway and Denmark.

I suspect this is because Copenhagen and Oslo are located close to the Swedish border and have been watching Swedish TV for a long time. Stockholm has never been able to receive NRK and DR terrestrially and there is very little interest in getting that reception there. As TV packages are mostly uniform across each country, what goes for the capital goes for everyone.
MR
mrwish
But you're making my point for me that dubbing is not a practice among Scandinavian languages. And all the more so that NRK offers a 'clean' viewing option (personally though since I like to learn Scandinavian language, I welcome subtitles, but that's a different conversation altogether) should DR and SVT worry that some viewers may choose NRK feed for whatever reason over them. I agree that in Sweden personal homes (e.g. Airbnbs and not hotels) do not offer national Danish, Finnish, or Norwegian channels.

But let's go to broader examples. Howabout the Netherlands and RoI where BBC programmes are offered on both national broadcasters and in original languages? In the case of the Netherlands, BBC One and Two are available on basic pay-TV (in fact available via Digitenne, the counterpart of what was once top-up TV). RTE and Virgin lineups surely have BBC programmes on offer when in fact BBC One and Two are available.

Channel 4 seems to be a special case as it is technically a different channel that replaces some programmes broadcast on the UK version due to rights restrictions.


For French-language TV, in Belgium and Switzerland where the major French channels are available on subscription cable/satellite/IPTV, they get around this by the local channels often airing episodes of things like the popular French soaps a day or two in advance of TF1/France 2/France 3, so they get the first showing.

Back on the main topic of the thread - in France I believe there are certain laws about channels from neighbouring countries that are available via terrestrial overspill, being must-carry on cable networks in those border regions. This seems patchy or at least not 100% the case though. German, Belgian and Swiss channels are usually carried in this way, but you don't get British channels in the Calais region, or the Spanish ones around Perpignan or Biarritz. Maybe this is down to cable availability in those areas though.

As an aside, often cable is used as the general communal TV feed into apartment blocks in France instead of a distrubuted UHF antenna feed, and because of this the cable networks have to carry the free DVB-T channels in DVB-T format (on top of DVB-C for cable receivers) for general reception. This seems to apply to the cross border channels in areas where they're carried too - when Germany switched from DVB-T MPEG2 to DVB-T2 with HEVC, the SFR cable network in the Eastern border region of France had to set up its own couple of DVB-T multiplexes on its network there carrying all of the FTA German DVB-T2 channels (Das Erste, ZDF, SWR, etc), transcoded to MPEG4 SD (compatible with French standard TNT DVB-T receivers) so people could still receive them as before.

(*) I believe that SVT, NRK and DR showing each others' programmes is done via the normal routes of programme acquisition (where you pay to buy a show). It is possible that SVT, NRK and DR have a mutual scheme to 'swap' shows that is effectively the same as buying and selling but doesn't include financial transactions - though I'm not aware of such a deal and I would have thought it was difficult to implement when it comes to archive, stills, music and talent rights.


The Nordic public broadcasters have a long-standing agreement making much of their in-house productions available to each other for free. It's called Nordvision (a bit like Eurovision, but with fewer countries and deeper cooperation):

https://www.nordvision.org/om-about/english/

The Nordic broadcasters realised early on that free exchange of programming was better than having to sell to each other.

Another part of this cooperation is that the fees each broadcaster collects for retransmission in other Nordic countries is pooled into the "Nordvision Fund", which helps finance expensive programming like drama.

As for general availability of neighbouring channels on cable, it is largely determined by what customers expect. When cable was rolled out in the 80s, SVT became nationally available in Norway in Denmark, but NRK and DR were only available in the parts of Sweden that were close to Norway or Denmark. With the switch to digital cable, NRK and DR have largely been relegated to special add-on packages in Sweden, while SVT and TV4 are available in basic packages in Norway and Denmark.

I suspect this is because Copenhagen and Oslo are located close to the Swedish border and have been watching Swedish TV for a long time. Stockholm has never been able to receive NRK and DR terrestrially and there is very little interest in getting that reception there. As TV packages are mostly uniform across each country, what goes for the capital goes for everyone.


The Swedish, Norwegian and German channels all seem to be part of the basic cable package in Denmark, at the most basic level, alongisde DR, TV2, etc.

Strangely for the German channels, as well as Das Erste HD, ZDF HD and NDR HD, this also seems to usually include some of RTL, RTLII and Sat.1 all also in HD. These commercial channels are nowadays only available FTA in SD on satellite, with the HD versions being pay channels via both satellite and terrestrial (where they were FTA DVB-T SD before), so there seems to be some kind of extra effort on behalf of the Danish operators to carry the HD version of overspill channels that are no longer actually available as free to air terrestrial overspill signals!
HE
headliner101


Back on the main topic of the thread - in France I believe there are certain laws about channels from neighbouring countries that are available via terrestrial overspill, being must-carry on cable networks in those border regions. This seems patchy or at least not 100% the case though. German, Belgian and Swiss channels are usually carried in this way, but you don't get British channels in the Calais region, or the Spanish ones around Perpignan or Biarritz. Maybe this is down to cable availability in those areas though.


Can UK channels be seen in Calais though considering the distance is 20 miles? Also, can one view French channels from Dover?
MR
mrwish


Back on the main topic of the thread - in France I believe there are certain laws about channels from neighbouring countries that are available via terrestrial overspill, being must-carry on cable networks in those border regions. This seems patchy or at least not 100% the case though. German, Belgian and Swiss channels are usually carried in this way, but you don't get British channels in the Calais region, or the Spanish ones around Perpignan or Biarritz. Maybe this is down to cable availability in those areas though.


Can UK channels be seen in Calais though considering the distance is 20 miles? Also, can one view French channels from Dover?


Yes, you can definitely receive French TV (mainly from the Boulogne-Sur-Mer transmitter) around the coast of Kent.

On the other side I would imagine the same applies to some extent at least (from the Dover transmitter), especially considering Belgian cable networks used to receive their feed of the BBC channels from there using an antenna on top of a water tower in a park in Oostende, which is further away up the coast!
HE
headliner101
Too bad Britain has no 'must carry' laws to cover the 'border' area with France. I mean in NI, Sky and Virgin are happy to carry RTE and TG4 but not in the extreme south east when it comes to TF1, France 2/3.
KU
Kunst
But Northern Ireland is culturally and intrinsically Ireland in many ways, the same cannot be said about SE England, which is as English as it gets
LL
London Lite Founding member
There's more of a viable argument for the French TNT channels to be made available in London than on the Kent coast.
HE
headliner101
Yes but that would not matter if there is a must-carry rule.
KU
Kunst
And why there should be? France doesn't get the British channels anywhere in the country either, AFAIK

And there's little demand for it

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