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Just to remind you, the article was written by Americans for Americans, hence the usage of the term "subs" is not necessarily the same as the term "subs" as understood in the context of English tv terms.

<sighs> I had expected better of you, Corin - I know you can recognise a humorous comment when it's made.


MrTomS? You in the house? Can you enlighten us as to what subs would be likely to mean to you and/or your fellow Americans?

And then, Corin, I think, as this argument is getting rather tired, shall we agree to shake hands and put it to bed?

Finding this debate over a single word a bit pathetic, but nevertheless my understanding of the verb subscribe is that you must have specifically applied for and received good or services in response to your request. That would then mean that you must be individually identifiable by the service provider.

Therefore, you don't subscribe to freeview. Not because it's not paid for, but because you have never specifically request the Freeview service - it's just been there and you have used it. Freeview can't identify any DTT viewers individually - they might know rough numbers of boxes in circulation but they can't say for certain that Mr Bloggs of Rugby uses Freeview. Therefore, they don't have any subscribers.

What we really need is somebody from the US media industry to say whether or not the term "subs" is used for viewers, or perhaps more appropriately households, even in terms of non pay TV services.


I would prefer that it be buried in an unmarked grave.

So, to get things back on to topic, do you or do you not think it probable that such gems as "All My Children" and "General Hospital" will or will not be part of the daytime listing on the proposed UK " ABC family type " station?

Personally, I anticipate that ABC will fill the new station with lots of cheap programs such as the two soaps mentioned above. After all, this is a commercial advertising supported TV service , and not a premium pay TV service.

In my totally uniformed and speculative opinion, I anticipate that the proposed new ABC station on the SDN multiplex will look a lot like a time shifted version of

<http://abcfamily.go.COM/home.html>

This is just my opinion and I may very well be proved wrong. Time will tell, and then you can be the judge.

PS It would not surprise me if Disney ABC have been keeping a very close watch on the ratings of Ftn in deciding the timing and viability of a new service on DVB-t in the UK.

I am well aware that everyone is saying the SDN Mux is full but if they added another channel what would happen, i am sure that would work. Oh and on the Digital spy forums ages ago i am sure i can remember reading that the shopping channels were just place holders until a suitable replacement was found. To me that makes perfect sense, rather than having an empty slot fill it with shopping tv and create suome revenue. I personally am praying that this new Disney channel will replace TV Travel shop as it is utter crap. If they are place holders i am sure QVC would stay and the others go as QVC was around in the dark times between ITV D and FREEVIEW.

I may be mistaken <glances over at Corin >, but I think SDn accepts any channels which pay their carriage fees. I presume that they would be happy to drop a channel if another one came along offering to pay more, but I don't think they have specifically put shopping channels as placeholders - it's more the case that they are the channels that wanted to pay to be on the platform.

And presumably has/gets a license from the ITC? What actually is the sequence? A carriage deal first and then apply for a license, with a proviso that the carriage deal becomes null and void if the license is not approved?


Surely they would only be happy to do this if their legal department approved breaking the contract, since I thought that the carriage deals were for a fixed period of time?

Your answers, please?

I hold my hands up and admit to being at the limit of my knowledge in that area. I wouldn't be surprised if the shopping channels had been given fairly short-term agreements, if SDN thought there was a chance of other channels were to become interested later, who might get better ratings (and thus be able to be charged more?).

I'm interested to see if anyone else can answer Corin's questions too.