Sky TV Customer Survey - 4th July

7. Please use this space to provide any other feedback you may have:

I feel ripped off by Sky because you will no longer be carrying Aviva Premiership Rugby, substituting in its stead the RaboDirect Rugby that has been free on BBC and/or S4C for several seasons.  Even in the last two seasons you failed to show some key Aviva Premiership matches such as semifinals which were only available on ESPN.

I hate paying you silly amounts every month so that you can pay ever more millions to line the pockets of football players, and I'm frustrated by the fact that I can't tailor my subscription in any way that's meaningful to me. It's no good offering Sky 1 Sports and Sky 2 Sports as separate products when what I want is split across them.

If you wanted to, you have the capabilities to offer a Rugby subsscription, a Cricket subscription, a Golf subscription, etc. You exploit your monopolistic position and show these sports across a mixture of your channels, instead of as discrete products. So if I want all of the Rugby and none of the football I still have to buy Sky Sports 1 & 2 at disproportionate cost.

You are cross-subsidising football's grossly excessive wages from subscriptions of people like me that don't want it.  I hope one day the Competition Commission will take you to the cleaners for abuse of your market position, which I think has been going on for years.

So when the new BT Sports offering comes on line, Sky Sports will be distinctly optional.  I can live without Super Rugby and I can visit at least two places within 500 metres' walk to see any interesting matches that you still manage to show.  

When you treat your customers like that, don't be surprised when they desert you, no matter how good your customer service agents are. This one was fine, but I'd received the letter telling me of yet another inflation-smashing increase in monthly payments just that morning.

Absolute joy - a week's holiday

I thoroughly enjoyed my week's holiday, though it was busy from finishing work on Friday night until going back ten days later. Two trips (one overnight) to my late father's house to continue with the preparations to put it on the market and to meet an estate agent, three full length Rugby matches refereed, together with about two dozen 7s matches over four days at the National Schools Sevens, nine items sold on Ebay, a curry evening with Ruth's colleagues from the maths department, a pretty exciting Grand Prix and a trip to Broadcasting House to watch the recording of The Now Show for BBC Radio 4.

Almost all of these were an absolute joy. Even the house clearing effort progressed well, and apart from poor weather and lots of mud on the Thursday, the Sevens were great; talent, speed, skills and some really close,exciting games, and the chance to referee some fantastic teams.

The event in the Radio Theatre at Broadcasting House was fascinating too, not least for the contrasts with a TV recording. Last autumn, we saw BBC2's Mock The Week at Television Centre. The studio was completely rammed with lights and cameras - over 100 gantries above our heads, and I may have counted ten cameras used during the show, each with its own cameraman. We were in our seats for a full three hours to produce a sub 30 minute programme, plus a few segments for the Christmas show. This was in the end exhausting and I'm sure that the cast struggled to raise many laughs after the two hour mark.

The Now Show seemed much lighter on its feet, though maybe more of it was scripted. Just a microphone each (one set lower for John Holmes), and we were out within 90 minutes - less than an hour's recording, and could easily have taken more.

The Radio Theatre is worth a closer look. Art deco, with bas relief sculptures round the sides at floor level - the floor has clearly been raised by some six feet. Wikipedia says that the sculptures are by Gilbert Bayes, though much else around the building is by Eric Gill. Sadly there is no mention, let alone photographs, of this work in the National Archives article, which however does show his work at Lords Cricket Ground, amongst others.

Television retuning

Not a good outcome. On 25th March, households that use the Rowridge transmitter on the Isle of Wight had to retune their digital TV receivers. Before the retuning, we received 119 channels. Now we have at best 79, though on the main TV the total is only 40. BBC1, BBC2 and Channel 4 have disappeared completely, ITV1 is now available with considerable pixelation on one box and not at all on the other.

Apparently we may have to wait until 2012 for the signal to be turned up to full strength.