Brian Butterworth wrote:
Anyway, aren't Ofcom the people to complain to about this and
not the online petitions site (which, as the recent road
charging and ID card petitions has shown, doesn't appear to
influence anything anyway)?
People did and Ofcom ignored them...
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/paytv/responses/
If Ofcom ignores people, and the PM ignores people (though at least he
sends people an email telling them that he's ignoring them) then I
really doubt lobbying the government will do anything. Assuming that
Ofcom allow Sky to go ahead with the MPEG4 plan (which is still a big
if), and Sky actually do follow through with it, then the market will
decide.
If anyone can get over 1.8 million people to sign in six months, then the
newspapers will have another feeding frenzy. And I recon there are 13.5
million receivers out there, with 7 million homes being 'Freeview only', so
plenty of people to sign.
(Perhaps that's what Sky wants, millions of people saying how much they LOVE
Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three... )
Yeah, but that was 1.8 million people (out of how many 10s of millions
of drivers) who didn't want a massive invasion of privacy that would
make driving even more outrageously expensive than it already is.
I think you're in for a tougher time. Not everyone who is Freeview only
is going to be adverse to Sky (as, like myself, they might not be able
to get cable or satellite). It's also hard to tell how much people will
really miss the three free Sky channels, especially as there's always
been the impression that a lot of people who choose Freeview aren't all
that bothered by the number of extra channels they receive, as if they
were that bothered, they'd get Sky or Cable. And I'm not that certain
that one part of the media (the newspapers) would ever get into that
much of a frenzy over government regulations over another part of the
media - especially regulations that don't involve a titillation factor,
and also not forgetting that some of those newspapers are owned by the
same people who own Sky.
Scot
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