Rebirth of England

Another problem with ON Digital is that set-top boxes are sold in street stores or large supermarkets, and their selling prices include the rental of the set-top box and the first year's viewing fee.

Since no bank account details are required to activate the TV card, many of the so-called rented set-top boxes actually have unverifiable addresses.

In addition, the encryption system used by ON Digital's pay-per-view channels has been decrypted in Europe, which means that it is very easy for people to create and sell pirated receiving cards to receive these channels.

Other problems in ON Digital's operations include a complex pricing system and a poor subscriber management system.

While rival BSkyB already offers electronic program guides, they still only offer users paper TV guides.

And they have insufficient technical support for customers...

Finally, Carlton and Granada did not directly employ ON Digital's management and operations staff. Many were given short-term employment contracts, and some key individuals left without notice.

Competition and poor management led to ONdigital experiencing a high customer churn rate. Finally, in order to change the predicament, Granada Television Co., Ltd. and Carlton Television Co., Ltd. changed ON Digital's name to ITV on July 11, 2001. Digital.

Because the two TV stations that formed ON Digital were both owned by ITV, in order to borrow the reputation of ITV, the name was changed to ITV Digital.

It’s just that ITV Digital is still not out of the woods, especially after they purchased the television rights to the British Football League from the Football Association at a high price...

Because Sky TV owns the broadcast rights to the Premier League, its sports channels attract fans to pay to watch.

In order to compete with it, ITV Digital decided to launch a sports channel and spent a sky-high price to buy the broadcast rights of the British Football League.

In fact, the cost of the English Football League has become a huge burden for ITV Digital.

The FA took Granada Television Ltd. and Carlton Television Ltd. to court in March 2002 because they could not pay the television broadcast fee in full.

On June 1, 2002, most of ITV Digital's channels ceased broadcasting.

Before the suspension, ITV Digital had launched a total of about 100 pay digital terrestrial TV channels.

After ITV Digital stopped broadcasting, OFCOM reorganized the license auction for the three multicast channels muxB, C, and D. Currently, only two companies, the BBC and Summit Media, participate in the bidding for licenses.

Prior to this, the three terrestrial digital TV licenses owned by ITV Digital were all pay channels.

In this negotiation, OFCOM also proposed that it would add "free broadcast only" restrictions to the three multicast channel licenses owned by ITV Digital, muxB, C, and D.

In other words, after obtaining these licenses, the TV channels they launch can only be broadcast for free and cannot charge content fees. That is to say, most of them can only make profits through additional methods such as advertising. This is also a point that the BBC is dissatisfied with.

"In fact, the BBC also proposed to form a company with us to operate these three licenses together, but this is not the best choice for us now, so in the end we rejected the proposal and prepared to compete separately for one of them. A license plate.”

Fergal's decision was also inspired by Barron.

It can be seen that ITV Digital, which had three terrestrial digital TV licenses at the time, had launched about 100 TV channels.

In other words, not every license can only correspond to one TV channel. This is determined by the technical principles of digital TV. To put it bluntly, if you have a license, you can have a set of TV channels - as for the specific channels The quantity can be dozens.

The current situation of Summit Media is that unlike the BBC or Sky TV, they have sufficient broadcast content, so in the early stage, they will only open one channel temporarily, and then gradually increase the number.

Whether they form a joint venture with the BBC or buy too many licenses individually, it is unnecessary for them.

"The matter has been dragging on for several months. It's not us who are in a hurry. OFCOM will either compromise with the BBC or put pressure on it. We just need to follow their lead and accept the conditions. It is impossible for our conditions to be much worse than those of the BBC." . The most important thing for us at the moment is to start purchasing program content, so that when we have TV channels, we don’t have enough content to fill the broadcast time.”

Barron gave this order. After all, serious TV channels don’t use ITV’s broadcast time like they do now, which only requires one hour a day.

Even if there is rest time, the nearly twenty hours of playback time from morning to early morning still needs to be guaranteed, not to mention that Barron is preparing for 24-hour uninterrupted playback - this kind of playback method has already become Convention.

"We have talked with ITV and can purchase some content from their library, including some TV series and variety shows, and because they have already been broadcast, the price is also very cheap."

Taking advantage of this moment, Barron also said to him:

"I have previously talked with John Smith, who is in charge of TV content trading for the Sinclair family in the United States. We can also introduce some programs from their TV stations, which are also mainly variety shows and TV series. In addition, in terms of news, we can also work with Independent newspapers work together to produce news programming.”

Relatively speaking, the broadcast time of a TV channel, noon and before 23:00 in the evening, are considered prime time, plus morning news programs, these are mainly filled by programs produced by Summit Media.

As for other time periods with relatively small viewing groups, especially the time period from 12 midnight to 6 am when very few people watch, they can be filled with some relatively "cheap" imported content, at least in the early days. made.

"In addition, we also need an experienced content acquisition editor to find potential programs for acquisition from independent production companies."

At present, it seems that Fergal's performance in these matters is pretty good, and Barron is also ready to give him a chance to see if he is qualified.

Otherwise, the only choice is to recruit a qualified manager from another TV station.

When it came time for dinner, Barron hosted the "Downton Abbey" stars at Chatsworth House.

Although the producer and screenwriter are both Julian, because it was filmed several years earlier than the original time and space - in the previous life, "Downton Abbey" was not launched until 2010 - many of the characters in this TV series are starring They are all different from the version Barron saw in his previous life.

The actors who play Duke Crawley, the Duchess and the old lady are still familiar faces to Barron. The age of these actors will not be affected by filming a few years earlier.

Among them, the actors of the three daughters of Duke Crawley have all changed.

Among these people, Barron saw a very familiar actor - the actress who played the female botanist in "Iron Man 3" that he had seen in his previous life.

Her sexy appearance at that time left a deep impression on Barron.

Barron, the young and handsome Duke and one of the authors of this novel, entertained these actors, and they were all honored.

During the conversation, Barron also learned the name of the familiar actress, Rebecca Hall, who was just 20 years old this year and played the role of Sybil, the youngest daughter of the Crawley family in "Downton Abbey".

Rebecca comes from an acting family. She starred in her first TV series when she was 10 years old, and her father was the producer of that TV series...

At this time, Rebecca was studying English Literature at St. Catherine's College, Cambridge University. However, because of her father, she participated in the audition for "Downton Abbey" and was selected. It was also for such a rare opportunity that she temporarily Applied for a leave of absence.

"I heard from a friend that there is a website called Woaw in the school. They are selecting the most beautiful female students in Cambridge. The winner will be rewarded by Your Highness the Duke..."

During this period, Rebecca took the initiative and said to Barron:

"It's a pity that I didn't sign up to participate because of filming..."