How does British TV work?

[Bob The Skutter]

^I have a television set, but if it was not for football I would not have a device attached to it capable of receiving TV broadcasts (i.e. a Cable/Satellite/Freeview box). I don't have one on my bedroom TV, just my games consoles and a DVD player.

My living room TV, when football isn't on, is my mother's domain.

If somebody offered me the ability to download to keep all of the shows I watch in high definition the day after they air in whatever their country of origin is for a reasonable price then I would take that option.

I have to admit, I would too. But I have my TV connected to my PC, so any shows I download are playing on my 42" screen, too.
Although, I have to say, there are a lot of shows that I just set to record, and watch when I'm bored, or when there's nothing else that I end up enjoying, that I would never bother paying for and downloading. But basically, that's because there's the full listings on the media centre, and I go through, and just press record on anything that sounds even slightly interesting.

 

[Hermiod]

I don't channel hop. I know exactly what I want to watch and I don't watch anything else. Yes, that makes discovering new shows tricky but that's the producer's problem, not mine.

Sooner or later, Heroes, Lost, 24, Stargate: Atlantis, Top Gear, The Simpsons and Battlestar Galactica will be gone and I will have nothing left to watch. I accept that.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I don't channel hop. I know exactly what I want to watch and I don't watch anything else. Yes, that makes discovering new shows tricky but that's the producer's problem, not mine.

Sooner or later, Heroes, Lost, 24, Stargate: Atlantis, Top Gear, The Simpsons and Battlestar Galactica will be gone and I will have nothing left to watch. I accept that.

I have to say, that seems like a strange attitude to me, but fair enough if that's how you see it.
I don't channel hop either, it's been years since I regularly watched anything while it was actually on air. But as I said, I just go through the listings, Documentaries, Drama, Sci-Fi, Comedy, and pick shows to record that sound interesting.

 

[Deckerd]

I mostly only watch stuff as it's being broadcast. I can't remember the last time I recorded anything.

 

[Angel4576]

Can't be bothered with a DVD Recorder. Sky+ is just as good and if it's something worth keeping then I'll just download/buy it anyway.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

Can't be bothered with a DVD Recorder. Sky+ is just as good and if it's something worth keeping then I'll just download/buy it anyway.

Same here. I had a Tivo for around 5 years, then I built a Media centre with 2 tuners. I download or record everything I watch, if it's worth it, then I buy it.

 

[Hermiod]

I have to say, that seems like a strange attitude to me, but fair enough if that's how you see it.

I have found that as time has gone on, TV has become less and less interesting to me. I remember when we had TNG, DS9, The X-Files, Babylon 5 etc. Those were good days.

I had no means of seeing them at any time other than when they were aired on British TV and so I looked forward to them more, I think.

I don't channel hop either, it's been years since I regularly watched anything while it was actually on air. But as I said, I just go through the listings, Documentaries, Drama, Sci-Fi, Comedy, and pick shows to record that sound interesting.

That's half the problem, nothing does sound interesting. It all looks incredibly boring to me.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

I don't channel hop either, it's been years since I regularly watched anything while it was actually on air. But as I said, I just go through the listings, Documentaries, Drama, Sci-Fi, Comedy, and pick shows to record that sound interesting.

That's half the problem, nothing does sound interesting. It all looks incredibly boring to me.

If that's the case, how do you ever get interested enough to try anything new?

 

[Hermiod]

If that's the case, how do you ever get interested enough to try anything new?

On the rare occasions where I do it's through word of mouth.

I started watching Lost shortly before its first season finished. I would not have watched a show about a bunch of pretty people stuck on an island, and Channel 4 didn't exactly make it out to be much more than that.

Heroes looked good from the first time I heard about it, but that was the last new show I watched.

I can't see myself watching much more than spin-offs from the shows I already do watch now - Caprica, Stargate: Universe, a new Star Trek show or whatever.

I just don't think I'll miss TV when the time comes and I've got nothing left to watch.

 

[Kegek]

^
Promos are also handy. They give a good sense of if a show would be interesting, or just garbage you want to keep away via a ten-foot pole, a little handier than an episode summary as they provide some footage. I stumbled on Dexter by precisely that method.

Unless you're looking for sport, that is most definitely true. Sky at it's cheapest (1 mix) package £192, Sky World £540 per year.
Sky is rubbish, there's eleventy billion channels, but they're all repeats, or rubbish, with the occasional good American import that keeps you subscribing even though you know it's not worth what you're paying.

I watch it for the American imports and the Sky Movie Channels, the latter of which are really quite good. With Sky+ I've built up a tidy little library of the latter (and caught a few films I've been too lazy to order on DVD, that's always handy, and found the odd film it was genuinely worth to go out and buy on DVD like Renaissance). That's about all the TV I need anyway, and without Sky the TV would probably just be a big screen DVD player.

I don't watch sport.

 

[captcalhoun]

ITV are pricks when it comes to ad breaks...

and i will NEVER understand the mentality of both BBC1 and ITV1 in breaking up a movie for a frigging news bulletin.

i know they LEGALLY have to broadcast a bulletin between 8PM and 10PM, but they should either reschedule the news to before or after the movie or schedule the movie to finish by 10PM or start after the news...

 

[Gaius Baltar]

ITV add breaks are a real pain especially during the F1 races. I mean it’s a joke the number of times they have taken a break come back and positions have changed. At least the BBC has the rights to show next season. Also they censor a lot of the films and series that they show. For example they have made cuts to episodes of supernatural which were shown at 10pm. The BBC also used to censor daytime airings of Buffy and even episodes of The Next Generation. The Sci-Fi channel on SKY used to cut scenes from daytime Angel airings. I remember when the showed the first episode of season 5 during the day and they cut any part of the scene showing blood from a show about vampires crazy.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

ITV add breaks are a real pain especially during the F1 races. I mean it’s a joke the number of times they have taken a break come back and positions have changed. At least the BBC has the rights to show next season. Also they censor a lot of the films and series that they show. For example they have made cuts to episodes of supernatural which were shown at 10pm. The BBC also used to censor daytime airings of Buffy and even episodes of The Next Generation. The Sci-Fi channel on SKY used to cut scenes from daytime Angel airings. I remember when the showed the first episode of season 5 during the day and they cut any part of the scene showing blood from a show about vampires crazy.

You can't blame them for editing them to stay within guidelines, but you can blame them for not showing an unedited version at some time, at least BBC Two showed unedited repeats of Buffy.
I don't remember any cuts from Supernatural, though.

 

[Gaius Baltar]

ITV add breaks are a real pain especially during the F1 races. I mean it’s a joke the number of times they have taken a break come back and positions have changed. At least the BBC has the rights to show next season. Also they censor a lot of the films and series that they show. For example they have made cuts to episodes of supernatural which were shown at 10pm. The BBC also used to censor daytime airings of Buffy and even episodes of The Next Generation. The Sci-Fi channel on SKY used to cut scenes from daytime Angel airings. I remember when the showed the first episode of season 5 during the day and they cut any part of the scene showing blood from a show about vampires crazy.

You can't blame them for editing them to stay within guidelines, but at least BBC Two showed unedited repeats of Buffy.
I don't remember any cuts from Supernatural, though.

I think it was the episodes bloodlust from season 2 and skin from season 1 which they made cuts to when they aired on itv1 origionally. Not sure if the later itv2 repeats were uncut or not. They were also warned by Ofcom that supernatural promos couldnt be shown before 9pm.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

ITV add breaks are a real pain especially during the F1 races. I mean it’s a joke the number of times they have taken a break come back and positions have changed. At least the BBC has the rights to show next season. Also they censor a lot of the films and series that they show. For example they have made cuts to episodes of supernatural which were shown at 10pm. The BBC also used to censor daytime airings of Buffy and even episodes of The Next Generation. The Sci-Fi channel on SKY used to cut scenes from daytime Angel airings. I remember when the showed the first episode of season 5 during the day and they cut any part of the scene showing blood from a show about vampires crazy.

You can't blame them for editing them to stay within guidelines, but at least BBC Two showed unedited repeats of Buffy.
I don't remember any cuts from Supernatural, though.

I think it was the episodes bloodlust from season 2 and skin from season 1 which they made cuts to when they aired on itv1 origionally. Not sure if the later itv2 repeats were uncut or not. They were also warned by Ofcom that supernatural promos couldnt be shown before 9pm.

They didn't say they couldn't show them, they just said the ones they were showing were too dark for family viewing hours.
Ah, probably why I didn't notice any, I watched on ITV 2.

 

[payndz201]

The UK censorship watershed (9PM) can sometimes lead to ridiculous decisions. Channel 4 made a big thing of getting terrestrial rights to Angel... then put it on at teatime, which meant they had to cut out all the blood and violence. This got especially ludicrous when they had an episode with a villain whose individual body parts could act on their own after being dismembered, as they couldn't actually show any of them. I think that episode was five minutes shorter than the rest.

 

[Bob The Skutter]

The UK censorship watershed (9PM) can sometimes lead to ridiculous decisions. Channel 4 made a big thing of getting terrestrial rights to Angel... then put it on at teatime, which meant they had to cut out all the blood and violence. This got especially ludicrous when they had an episode with a villain whose individual body parts could act on their own after being dismembered, as they couldn't actually show any of them. I think that episode was five minutes shorter than the rest.

Yeah, it's like they didn't even listen to the premise of the show before scheduling it.

 

[captcalhoun]

i gave up watching Angel on 4 after S1 and bought the VHS boxsets instead...

 

[diankra]

The UK censorship watershed (9PM) can sometimes lead to ridiculous decisions. Channel 4 made a big thing of getting terrestrial rights to Angel... then put it on at teatime, which meant they had to cut out all the blood and violence. This got especially ludicrous when they had an episode with a villain whose individual body parts could act on their own after being dismembered, as they couldn't actually show any of them. I think that episode was five minutes shorter than the rest.

Yeah, it's like they didn't even listen to the premise of the show before scheduling it.

There were complaints about the cuts in an item on Channel 4's Right to Reply series, and the woman who was in charge of programme acquisitions came on to basically say "I've heard what you said, but my judgement's better than yours, because I'm the one who's in this job."
On the Tube on the following Monday, I thought the woman who was sitting opposite me, reading the latest Ofcom report and looking increasingly miserable, looked familiar - and sure enough she got off at the right station for the Channel 4 building. Then when I got to the office and opened the post, there was the Ofcom report, including its decision that even the edited versions of Angel were unsuitable for transmission in that slot.
I suspect that she might not have stayed in that job for very long after that...

 

[Deckerd]

One of them does this at the moment. The Daily News Show is put on at 8.30 on one of the freeview channels, which means all the swearing is beeped out. How daft is that?