I understand what you mean but some TV viewers here including me in the states now have no choice but get cable to receive channels since the new DTV coverage is useless to them.Went from all local channels down to nothing here.Thats why I'm hot about it.If they did more studying with reception and crank up the power or better transmitting antennas and built TV sets with better tuners .I wont be fussing about it.Again Thanks to the telecommunications corps for screwing up everything for us and make the wireless freaks happy.

Heard about terrestrial DTV coverage not covering areas that were covered by terrestrial analogue TV in the USA. In UK the terrestrial DTV (Freeview) coverage is if anything even better than the analogue terrestrial TV coverage was, in the few areas where they cant get good DTV reception (we couldn't get a good DTV signal in Norfolk in the caravan) they use Freesat or Free-cable instead as that carries most of the Freeview channels. A lot of people in nearby European Countries have Freesat. I myself have Freeview & Free-cable from the phone/broadband company (Virgin Media)...

Yes, I agree. That is why terrestrial broadcast is still successful in Europe and Asia and is such a mess in the US and Canada. The North American governments should listen more to the public interests rather than selected business groups.

Just a thought. Is there anything like Freesat or Free-cable in USA? Or do you always have to pay a subscription? When I was in USA (Miami) 20'odd years ago I had a rabbit ears antenna on top of the TV, almost perfect pictures (apart from a bit of ghosting) on the VHF channels, all UHF ones were fuzzy..

Nothing is free in North America except over the air. And even then the content is mostly mind numbing and is riddled with advertising. And to add to the discomfort, most North American viewers accept the model of paying a provider (satellite or cable) to allow them to watch the increased advertising dribble.

The number of minutes of advertising has progressive gone up and the quality of programming has gone down. This is because there is less advertising revenue to go around. In the old days a successful program had a 60% or more market share. Today a smash hit is anything above 5% if that. The television world has changed whereas the US revenue model has not.

That is why I believe the revenue model in the UK is still okay. OTA choice may be limited but there is still better stuff to be found to watch on the BBC and ITV channels and no advertising on the BBC.

IIRC there is free to air satellite in north America, but the programming is mostly garbage that is below OTA programming quality (IIRC it's used mostly for remote broadcast links between stations and remote program trucks/facilities)....Almost no one knows it exists and even fewer actually watch it.

I agree 100 percent.

I probably mentioned before.Don't forget the $5 dollar broadcast TV fees the cable company tacks on our monthly bills.

Maybe the broadcasters can soak their advert clients for more cash instead of its viewers.I agree with Penthode on adverts .We get soaked with the 5 minute adverts in the programs every 8 minutes.The programs are getting shorter with more ads inserted in them.The killer is that we get stuck paying them $5 bucks a month on top of it.

Back to the original topic of producers.

With the crap that airs today here.There is not much producing going on with these reality shows.Just set up the cameras and let them roll.Cheaply made productions with some those shows will make the local access cable channel productions look like top pro productions.

Better off to watch amateurs on Youtube then what is produced on the networks.The sitcoms suck and not funny.The classic game shows like Jeopardy,the Wheel and The Price is Right are still good to watch.Drama shows like the CSI collection and other cop type drama shows are good but getting cropped for more ads..

Without addressing subjective quality issues, the average reality TV show is a bear to produce. Instead of having a written, presumably efficient plan that cast and crew follows, reality TV relies on multi-camera coverage to the extreme. This over-shooting results in tons of footage that has to be screened and logged (by producers -- the non-financial, non-decisionmaking kind ) in order to be edited together to produce the desired story line. (The story line is not left to chance as much as would be expected.) Reality show low-level producers are subject to extremely long hours with very low average pay, as there is always someone standing by in the wings to take their place as a "producer on a national network TV show". I would guess that reality shows shoot and log at least four times as much footage as a scripted multi-camera show does.

Chip

Thanks Chip for the info and explaining it .Yes .OK Low paid producers.I'm surprise with the unions they can get away with it. I figure they had to sort of hours of video in order to edit the show together.Theres room for error for wrong scene call ups.I wonder how many hours of the Kardashian's over shoots on the cutting room floor.

Yes with script shows.Everything is organized with the script and the storyboard.The cast should cruise through it with a couple of takes.

Speaking of UK TV shows.I enjoy these shows.Post other when I think of them.


Keeping Up Appearances (S15 E5)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JFBuA4aCibU

As Time Goes By Season 7 E03 The New Neighbors

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ee0zrEbYDzw

These are will produced shows and very funny.

BBC Licence used to be 10/- ($1) a year!
CPB (usa) gets 100X the Fed money it got in the late-60s!
Why are Bankrupt countries throwing money at Broadcasting?
(Bankrupt: borrowing just to pay the interest on Debt)
(which both countries are doing)

CPB more likely is getting less Fed dollars today then years ago.I have notice PBS is having more pledge drives in the resent years.

Running programs on TV is not cheap after everybody gets their cut with the royalties it makes.I have no idea how much does PBS have to pay for a classic movie or series like Sesame Street ,Nova and other popular shows.The inside shows are probably cheaper but the outside shows are more likely expensive.


Maybe somebody here in the biz can shed some light on it.Thanks.

We need to put a Scotsman in charge - But not John Reith!

10/- was $2 in 1925. For many years it was $4 to the pound.

This website is invaluable for working with historic amounts of money in both the US and the UK. Their methods are well researched and use the best available data sets. Some comparisons are available back to the 13th century!
https://www.measuringworth.com

Putting in 10/- (ten shillings = 50 pence in current usage) and getting today's value gives a set of numbers from £25 to over £200 depending on which comparison method you use. If you look at the income comparison, a good measure of affordability, it's £143, close to the present day licence fee. You get rather more for your money from the BBC now than then.

The Pound was way more 'Sound' than I thought;
4:1 would have given England very strong purchasing power for imports.
Shows you how decimated the US Dollar has been by a century of [Gov-engineered] inflation!
The worst is yet to come after they discover their latest desperate maneuver -
- GDP-expansion-by-immigration - fails to deliver growth & deceive creditors.