From: Tony Williams 

Mark wrote:
> "Tony Williams"  wrote in message
> news:458af83b{at}w3.nls.net...
>> Mark wrote:
>>> You guys all have to pay involuntarily for the BBC, don't you?
>> I wish I could pay $200 a year for 8 advertising-free TV channels here.
>> Instead, I get to pay about $50 a month to be bombarded by adverts every 5
>> minutes.
>
> True enough, though I'm sure they have their separate cable bill to get to
> their financed BBC and other channels.

I don't know about that - it was all broadcast when I lived in England.
Perhaps Adam or Phil can enlighten us on the state of cable vs. broadcast
in the UK these days.

> Too, I imagine on a per capita basis
> (i.e. if their were only 60M of us, it'd probably $200 a head as well), we
> pay a similar amount indirectly via the grants given to PBS by the
> government.

I would have thought just the opposite. More people = less per-capita cost, surely?

Regarding PBS, I'm afraid I rarely watch it, and when I do they always seem
to be in the middle of a begathon; same goes for NPR.

I may be in a minority, but I really think podcasts are the way of the
future: on-demand, pausable, free, timely enough for all but breaking
headlines. Fact is, I rarely use my iPod for music these days because I
spend so much time listening to podcasts.

--
Tony

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