Give us a BREAK! (Sky 1)

Member Name: imgareth

Product:	Sky 1
Date:	31/01/02 (74 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: If you like the simposons and repeats, great I suppose

Disadvantages: adverts, Lack of Variety, errr.... Adverts!

As you will probably eventually see, I am a great fan (and believer? I hate using that word) of the BBC. Good old BBC. We pay a tiny amount of money each year to have access to advert free, generally good quality and minimalised (not a word) repeats. This is what I like. So, as I'm sure you can understand, I'm not too keen on Sky 1 at all.

With all Television companies, their primary channel is supposed to be their flagship. On this channel is supposed to be general entertainment, fit for all ages. With Sky, this is not the case. They have quite rightly moved the sports to the sports channels, as this is where it belongs. But through the broad specalism of other channels, Sky 1 has been left with nothing much to put on.

Look in your TV guide right now. Look at Sky 1's column. All you can see are repeats of Stargate SG-1, the Simpsons and various Star-Treks. Now, I'm not saying these are bad, but all day long? Ridiculous! Often one or even two (if you are lucky) of these will be new episodes, which are far newer than what terrestrial television is showing. The only reason for this is that Sky can afford to buy the earlier episodes. Why? I'll tell you why. Because there is an island full of mugs over here.

The thing I hate most about TV are Adverts. I can cope with ITV and Channel 4's adverts (when I watch these channels), as I can't really moan - I don't pay for the channels. But for some reason, I'm PAYING for sky, and I'm still expected to have to sit through endless adverts. That doesn't make sense. If the adverts were for shorter periods, and only between programmes, this would be more acceptable, as the endless repeats of the BBC advertising their own shows can get a bit tedious, so varying commercial adverts would me a nice break. But this is no excuse for placing them in the middle of programs.

Apart from this, very big issue, Sky 1 also suffers from that lac
k of variety. I'm not saying it doesn't have good shows, but it just has too much of the same. To really be Sky's Flagship, maybe it should consider a little more drama, comedy and a bit more news. Yes, I know you have various News channels, but so does the BBC, but it won't stop them showing the 1/6/10 o'clock news, not even in the future when everybody has access to News 24. Just because a viewer has the capability of surfing channels, it doesn't mean Sky has to make us do this. By showing the same sort of stuff all the time, some people will sit there all day watching it. if they threw in a bit more variety, perhaps they would help educate SOME of the viewers a bit more (those who need educating, and who vegetate watching sci-fi/simpsons all day), and if not this, getting them to turn the telly off because 'it?s all a load of rubbish right now', they may think to themselves.

And perhaps they should review the adverts/charging thing. I mean look. Star trek Voyager is only on for 45 minutes on BBC 2. On Sky 1 it is on for an hour. That?s a full 15 minutes of adverts. I'm sorry to those who disagree, but that's plenty enough to say that Sky 1 is just not good enough. Stick to the BBC I say. Buts that's just my (very much NOT universal) opinion!

[NB, I think this op isn't the best one I've done, so if you read it and thought is was... well, a bit pants, then I apologise. There are plenty other good ones on this subject around, so please go have a read. Other people have a wider spectrum on this subject than I!]

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