It's up and running at $6.99 a month. https://www.britbox.com
Great news if you can't work a VPN and want to watch UK soaps like Eastenders, Emmerdale or Holby City. Not so great news if you want to watch Downton Abbey, Sherlock or Top Gear. They're not there. Some of the back catalogue stuff is better, but of course the best UK stuff is mostly already filtering through to PBS, Netflix and Amazon. Adam On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 9:30 PM, Tom Wolper <twol...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, Dec 13, 2016 at 9:58 AM, Adam Bowie <a...@adambowie.co.uk> wrote: > >> Coming soon to US audiences, from the BBC and ITV, is a "Netflix-style" >> on demand service called BritBox: >> >> https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/13/bbc-and-itv-to >> -launch-britbox-on-demand-service-in-us >> >> Another OTT streaming service seeking a monthly fee for access to a host >> of programmes. >> >> Clearly this won't feature any of the British shows that you can already >> see on other platforms. But if you're a massive fan of EastEnders but >> hadn't found a legal outlet for it in the US, your dreams are about to come >> true. >> >> With Acorn TV already doing a lot of this, I'm not sure how big the >> market will be. If no US networks, cable nets, or streaming services have >> already picked up a British show, you might imagine that it probably has >> limited appeal. We shall see... >> > > Three points: > > 1. I don't know if there would be regulatory hurdles, but several years > down the line BritBox and Acorn could merge if there is more value in a > unified service. > > 2. Some music industry analysts saw the mid-1980s as the time for a crash. > It was saved by the coming of the CD. Music companies realized that they > could make huge amounts of money by re-releasing their back catalogs. > Albums which had been gathering metaphorical dust were remastered and > re-released for a fraction of what it would cost to do new music. The > industry crash was put off until 2000 and Napster. > > The TV business has to see a parallel. TV companies have lots of old shows > in their inventory. Finding a platform to re-release them and gain some > revenue is easy money. Now they are just figuring out how to make it work. > > 3. In his book Gods Like Us, film critic Ty Burr wrote about the history > of the movie star. Before 1915 filmmakers did not identify the actors in > their films. When it became painfully clear that audiences identified with > these actors, the filmmakers had a flash of business genius. A film company > would make a film and market it to bring in audiences. When the run was > over they would have a new film and be back at square one in terms of > marketing. But if they sold the stars instead of the film, audiences would > anticipate new films with their favorite stars and that would take care of > the marketing. > > Relating this to BritBox: US audiences do not know a lot of UK TV stars. I > see a big hurdle in getting people to pay for subscriptions to a service > where they do not know the series or the stars. > > -- > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > --- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "TVorNotTV" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to tvornottv@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to tvornottv-unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tvornottv+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
