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SCART is traditionally associated with 576i (interlaced, 15.6 kHz by 50 Hz, and Europe-only), not 480p (progressive and 31.5 kHz by 60 Hz).

Should Star Trek be more about Ghosts? by Dervish ("Banned User" (!))

Maybe to revitalise the series it needs a more dark, ethereal spooky slant.

I have come up with three pitches for a sort of Trek meets X-files type show where Starfleet investigators delve into the supernatural.

Here are my first three ideas:

Some poossible stories to feature ghosts:

1) Starfleet Command is haunted by the wraith of a ship designer who is about to die but has projected his soul into the ship to make starships alive - Starfleet loves the new ships and the designer has to kill murderers and psycopaths to put their souls into battleships so he goes around murdering new people.

2) The Wormhole Aliens reveal to the Bajorans that all the Bajorans ever to have lived have their spirits in the Celestial Temple (wormhole) but are to be wiped out because the Prophets are cross with Bajor joining the Federation. Colonel Kira has to get Starfleets best scientists (Data, Bashir and Barclay) to send her spirit into the Temple to find Sisko and see what is going on.

3) Little Rene's gost can't find peace bercause of the horrible burning death he suffered in France. Picard, tormented by the ghosts pleas for help from his uncle, journeys back to France and discovers Rene and his famnily were murdered by Section 31 agents as part of a strange plot. Picard discovers the truth behind the reality of ghosts which has been hidden for millenia...

I think Star Trek should feature ghosts more heavily and these 3 ideas would be very exciting.

Disclaimer: No, I am not "Dervish". Fortunately. :-) I genuinely don't know if he/she is for real, but that's a strange thread. Shame that his "interesting" artist's impression of the ghost character (bad MS Paint on top of drawing of generic Star Trek ship deck, amusingly naff) is no longer on ImageShack.

I like this reply:-

Bizarre thread. It's a bit like asking whether Buffy the Vampire Slayer should be more about talking haddock - it could be, but it'd be a very different show.

They closed a lot of stores, but many still remained. Until now.

Ironically, this mirrors the situation with the UK chain which just went bankrupt for the *second* time a little over a week ago, having first gone under in January and closed a number of shops. (I assume it was a legally separate and/or spun-off business of the US parent before it first went bankrupt, as this seems to have happened independent of the troubles of the US Blockbuster).

I've no idea if any stores will remain open this time, but given that there was no obvious future for the chain when they *first* went bankrupt, it'd be surprising if it happened again.

Shame for the remaining people that worked there, but no surprise, and not a sad loss. Blockbuster entered the independent store and small chain dominated UK market at the end of the 80s (by buying the then largest rental chain), and ruthlessly exploited its US parent's size and connections to drive them almost all out of business- via predatory means- during the next decade, leaving a virtual monoculture by the turn of the millennium. From a comment on this page by Madiain28 at the time of their *first* bankruptcy earlier this year:-

This was a company owned by Viacom that is also parent company of most of the big distribution rental market. They showed no mercy in the late eighties and nineties closing thousands of independent rental shops by opening next door to them. Whilst independent shops had to pay between £30-60 per copy of film blockbuster could bulk receive from distributors virtually costing nothing just rejigging figures. They would strike a deal taking thousands of copies at a cost of about £5 then mass rent for a few weeks and sell off for more than the initial cost. Whilst the small independents struggled to buy a few copies and make any profit.

I worked part time for them when I was at college in the early nineties and there underlying ethos was to ensure they shut down any competition in the area by undercutting then as soon as they got rid of the competitor they whacked the prices up. 20 years ago they were charging £3.50 to £4 per night rental in Aberdeen once they closed Global video down.

He/she also adds:-

With the launch of Netflix and Lovefilm it was inevitable. As the market leader in the rental market they did not invest in online streaming or offer comparable deals in store as even their own online packages for post rental were far cheaper. Although I sympathise with all the staff as a company they deserve to go.

In short, nasty soulless corporate chain that monopolised the market then got so used to the nice stream of easy income and the cushion of monopoly status that they could "afford" not to respond immediately to changes in the market... so by the time things got bad enough to start affecting them it was too late for them to change. What a shame. *cough*

FWIW, the current owners (who bought it after the January bankruptcy and closure of some stores) were a private equity firm. While I might wonder why they bought the company when the chain was already clearly doomed by that point, it's well known that many private equity firms come out of these bankruptcies still having made a profit by dubious means (i.e. leaching the value out of the company and leaving the debts behind) and that may well have been the intent here, regardless of whether Blockbuster UK had a future or not.

Professional recording artists sell fuck-all these days. In the UK: in 1983, Red Guitars got to #8 in the indie charts with 60,000 sales of "Good Technology". In 2013, Rihanna has a mainstream number one album with under 10,000 sales.

The important thing to remember is that "pop music" is not actually all that popular. It's mostly a way to get publicity for your live shows and yourself as a celebrity - buy yourself onto the iTunes top 40. You've never heard of half these people because they are not actually popular.

I) Shoved up a Cow's backside http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/odd/news/a433126/farmers-iphone-disappeared-up-cows-backside.html

There are more tweets, plus a link to a YouTube video on Digitalspy

He is not a moron; you are an ignoramus. You are clearly not aware that in the UK, TV owners are expected to pay an annual tax - called a 'TV license' - for every box that picks up TV signals.

Actually cleaning up low level radiation like this isn't that hard. Plus you can tell when your done or not with a geiger counter.

There's already radioactive material in many electronics such as fire alarms. A link Not the most technical link, but it think it captures the spirit of the problem. And it contains a fun quote "If your smoke alarm is on fire you have bigger things to worry about"

Exactly (I submitted a story on this, but I think it's still lost in the firehose). It's depressing that so little of the mainstream media are covering this, instead still going with "Wonderful Lily Allen rallies and unites artists, and she closed her blog because people 'abused' her". She added nothing to the debate, just the same old tired arguments we've all heard before (you wouldn't steal from a shop; it's not free to make, how can it be free to give away? etc), it was like talking to a brick wall - she was completely obvlious to the point people were making when they pointed out her filesharing and plagiarism, instead she then retreated to defending it, whilst still saying it was wrong for anyone else to do it.

Her defence for filesharing mp3s was she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry" - what, just like most of us, who don't work in the music industry at all?

Her claim about it being 5 years ago is nonsense too, as the mp3s were still being shared until she took them down *after* she was found out (ignorance is no defence of the law, and it won't be in this new law either).

The claims that she received "abuse" - or "vitriol" as the Featured Artists Coalition claims - is nonsense too. I saw the blog, and most comments (all that I saw) were polite and well argued. It was heated sure, but with her accusations of people being thieves, she gave as good as she got. Furthermore, she posted and offensive rant by James Allan in support of her, who referred to people as "tight fucks" and their girlfriends as "fat fucks". Why is this offensive and sexist rant being excused and ignored by the media, whilst instead they focus on allegations of "abuse" from random anonymous people on the Internet?

Oh yes, and the Government Consultation ends 29 September (Tuesday) - please repond, unless you want the debate to be run by people like Lily Allen: http://www.berr.gov.uk/consultations/page51696.html .

LOL - I liked this. I'm surprised the story hasn't made Slashdot (I keep meaning to submit it). For those who hasn't heard, Lily Allen joined in the filesharing "debate" by lobbying for the planned law to disconnected suspected filesharers from the Internet. She set up a blog (now deleted) to tell the Internet why they are wrong, making the same poor arguments that we've all heard before ("it's not free to make, so it can't be free, can it?")

Except she's now been exposed as a filesharing pirate herself - she made "mixtapes" of other artists' music (she admitted she didn't have permission), in order to promote her own career, and the mp3s were still on her (EMI owned) website until she was exposed.

She was also found plagiarising an article in her first blog post, without permission or attribution.

There's been some coverage in the mainstream media, but sadly most are only reporting "Lily Allen against filesharing ... and then shuts blog because of the abuse she received, poor her!"

So basically, it's okay for her to rip other artists off in order to promote her commercial career, as she "didn't have a knowledge of the workings of the music industry", but the rest of us are stealing when we download, and should be disconnected. As an open source software developer who bends over backwards to obey copyright licences (e.g., when I'm looking to include music in my games), I find it ridiculous that she lectures me on copyright law, and gets to lobby for a law I oppose, yet she's the one ripping off artists without permission, and evidently doesn't give a crap unless it's her own music. But when I criticise Lily Allen on her arguments on support for the law, I'm the one who gets labelled a "thief"!

Why isn't Lily Allen being hounded for being a "thief", or sued for millions? And given they were on EMI's owned website, are they going to have their Internet connection disconnected?

And whilst she whined about "abuse" she allegedly received, she was happy to post this offensive rant from James Allan.

Yes, Microsoft in fact spent countless amounts of money and time opening up XNA development for the Zune HD, just to not allow XNA development for the Zune HD. In fact, they figured, "Hey let's waste fuck loads of cash doing something completely and utterly pointless for no reason whatsoever because it's not like we're a business in a recession where staff cuts are being made and departments need to justify their existence by doing something useful is it? Let's create Zune HD development tools even though we're not going to allow 3rd party apps on the app store!" -

http://www.develop-online.net/news/32857/XNA-Game-Studio-31-adds-Zune-HD-support

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a177633/xna-development-now-available-on-zune-hd.html

But then, you did read it on Slashdot so obviously you must be right, it must be true.

While your words are correct, the definitions have changed.
I realise this refers to DVB-T but the principle remains -
These are the frequencies in use.
These are the "channels" per mux.
Each geographical region has its own range of frequencies to provide the muxes. ie I am in the Band iv channel (21 to 38), while my parents 20 miles away are in the Band V channel (39 to 68). I have reason to believe that different areas use different parts of their respective "channels", ie Band V but only 52 to 68.
It's a bit like satellite in that the same program channel appears on many different frequencies. You'll notice how many places are as yet unoccupied. (ok some are radio but still ...)
Here's an old image from last year for bitrate and resolution, while this is from right now for frequency - different channel though. (You'll notice my graphics card is dying). There is a lot of capacity in digital transmission.

While your words are correct, the definitions have changed.
I realise this refers to DVB-T but the principle remains -
These are the frequencies in use.
These are the "channels" per mux.
Each geographical region has its own range of frequencies to provide the muxes. ie I am in the Band iv channel (21 to 38), while my parents 20 miles away are in the Band V channel (39 to 68). I have reason to believe that different areas use different parts of their respective "channels", ie Band V but only 52 to 68.
It's a bit like satellite in that the same program channel appears on many different frequencies. You'll notice how many places are as yet unoccupied. (ok some are radio but still ...)
Here's an old image from last year for bitrate and resolution, while this is from right now for frequency - different channel though. (You'll notice my graphics card is dying). There is a lot of capacity in digital transmission.

Hmm, seems I have to partially retract that: http://forums.gametrailers.com/showthread.php?t=534717 Obviously there are VGA cables from third parties in the market. But everything I find on short notice says digital is encrypted.

Strange. What I was able to find indicated that at worst it was a framerate selection issue.

http://www.fixya.com/support/t242728-samsung_lcd_tv_ps3

This guy said he had no problem other than a dodgy cable.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=719259

Not trying to break your stones, just looking into it since my purchase is pending soonest.

Hopefully everyone will realize that this clip is actually a satirical comedy sketch made in the 1990s (not an actual 1940s/1950s public information film)...

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=358596

This was discussed in the forum digitalspy.co.uk

Phorm in the UK

One business user was updating the website for his home business. He used his home network connection to inspect the appearance of his website. To his surprise, he could not understand why the format of his website was consistently different from what he had intended. Disturbed by this, he reinstalled the OS on all his servers in fear of being rootkitted, rechecked all his security settings, reconfigured his firewall, and performed a packet trace on every connection made. In the end he noticed that various links on his webpages were being changed and that in particular some were coming from dns.sysip.net. Basically, this system redirected any links to adverts back to Phorm servers.

Customer who was Phormed

Yes, yes it has been. It doesn't matter whether you call it 'OTA' as in regular ol' 'analog' broadcast by airwaves, or by satellite ( http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=465518 ) or through your cable company. It's all broadcast.

Physical media is only slightly different anyway, mostly when it comes to rentals (as you pay the rental place for having the thing for a limited time, making a copy essentially has you break that contract.. but that's my view on it). The distinction, otherwise, is rather vague.

Actually a lot of B7 was shot on my home world of Tha Vorest o' Dean, something that was used to entice me into believing the moving down here aged 10 would be a Good Idea. (It wasn't... which had dawned on me within a couple of years, when half my school were given pudding bowl haircuts and 40s style clothing to be extras for Singing Detective. They looked much smarter that way...

And Virgin could simply have passed the price onto their customers as subscription channels. How can it be a win for Virgin when their cable TV division has made a loss for two quarters?

According to this article, Sky have effectively lost 3.3m customers from their advertising reach, and would have to regain 200,000 subscribers to balance the books.

The name calling continues Burch calls Sky behaving like school bully.

Already have done - After Virgin Media decided to unlaterally drop Sky One and Sky News from their channel selections, 44,000 subscribers switched to Sky. Others like myself decided to cancel their premium rate channel subscription, and pay only for broadband service. The first sign of trouble was when Virgin decided that they wouldn't "bamboozle their customers with technical details", but instead to refer to all service options using S, M, L, and XL.

Digital Spy forums have in-depth discussions about Virgins financial status. In particular "Virgin Media TV channels have posted a loss for the past two quarters."

Not surprisingly, Virgin are in the process of increasing their service fees (a +1 pound/month surcharge for paper bills), and an increase for daytime telephone calls, (from 3.25 pence/minute to 4.00 pence/minute) for anyone doesn't have an XL service.

Trying to extract some revenue from their content producers seems to be the next moneymaking scheme.

Already have done - After Virgin Media decided to unlaterally drop Sky One and Sky News from their channel selections, 44,000 subscribers switched to Sky. Others like myself decided to cancel their premium rate channel subscription, and pay only for broadband service. The first sign of trouble was when Virgin decided that they wouldn't "bamboozle their customers with technical details", but instead to refer to all service options using S, M, L, and XL.

Digital Spy forums have in-depth discussions about Virgins financial status. In particular "Virgin Media TV channels have posted a loss for the past two quarters."

Not surprisingly, Virgin are in the process of increasing their service fees (a +1 pound/month surcharge for paper bills), and an increase for daytime telephone calls, (from 3.25 pence/minute to 4.00 pence/minute) for anyone doesn't have an XL service.

Trying to extract some revenue from their content producers seems to be the next moneymaking scheme.

In the UK, you can get a Freeview Sky card and receive 300+ channels totally free of charge (all 20 regional BBC channels), European news channels (Euronews, Russia Today, CNN, France 24, CCTV-9, Bloomberg) etc...

Although, if you have a Virgin Media TV service, you have to pay for the XL TV package just to get these freeview channels.

Full Satellite TV listing

most people have learned to tune the ads out.

The thing is that advertisers wont sit back and accept that - if people aren't looking then they will try and force more obtrusive advertising. It is easier to reject the model now than rely on distributors/developers integrity in the future.

Remember some of the lengths advertisers have tried to go to: Tivo banner ads that show when fast forwarding and unskippable ad patent for example.

Taking non-satellite, non-cable first, the basic list's here:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/terrestrial/epg/

The first five of those are available analogue (which is currently being phased out); everything is available on a series of digital multiplexes which may or may not be available depending on where you live. If you follow the website links from the Digitalspy page you should be able to get to "who owns what", but in brief the BBC is publicly owned and licence-fee supported, ITV is a standalone company, ad-supported, Channel 4 is publicly owned, ad-supported and Five is owned by RTL.

The largest satellite operator is Sky TV:
http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/tvguide
(mostly owned by News Corp)

The largest cable operator is Virgin Media
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=1
(standalone company)

"After the $100 price cut in the US on July 9, Wal-Mart, Target, Circuit City and GameStop have all reported huge increases in sales of the console during the first two weeks of July,"

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a67445/ps3-sale s-rise-135-per-cent-in-us.html

Can you please provide a link, any link, indicating that sales of the PS3 slowed thanks to the lower price?

(how on earth did they get to be posting at -1 anyway?)

There's less traffic in Digitalspy's PVR forums than there used to be, but it's still useful.

Also check links and reviews here:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/technology/dvrs/review s/

and:
http://www.pvrjunction.co.uk/compare/

Here are a couple of UK links.
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/forumdisplay.ph p?s=49ce2c1d175a955fa05d325036034edb&f=90
http://www.pvruk.co.uk/

My mistake; the first link should be to here.

europe is a HUGE territory for sony. they are already reports of record preorders [one order every 20 seconds? http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/gaming/a42660/playstat ion-3-enjoys-record-pre-orders.html ]. the ps3 is expensive and people have come to terms with it. sony could easily sell 500k ps3s bringing that total to what? 2 million world wide within the first week or so. this brings ps3 sales to 1/5 of what the xbox360 has shipped so far worldwide within four months. keep in mind that the 10 million xbox360s are also *shipped* numbers. MS has lowered their spring ship estimates because they flooded the market with consoles this winter in order to make the 10 million console claim.

then keep in mind that these are sales "without" games since resistance seems to be it for most people. what then when singstar is released? europe loves their singstar and eyetoy. what about when sony's litany of exclusives start to be released? no one will disagree that the price is steep for the ps3, but if you dont think sony can sell 5 million consoles you are in denial. in a six month period sony can sell 5 million psps worldwide [and thats a console everyone claims is "dead in the water"]

"Dispelling the perception of being simply a "gay western", the film doesn't really wholeheartedly fit into either category. Although it is socially important that a gay love story is enjoying a mainstream airing rather than being an arthouse film, it transcends the issue of sexuality. Rather, it is an excellently-told tale of two lovers whose love cannot be fulfilled, which can be universally related to and enjoyed by anyone regardless of sexual orientation."

And yeah, the review was written by a straight guy.

And from the Crimson Harvard Review, another five star review:

I've always been a fan of the devil's advocate position, but I'm a greater fan of honesty, and in that vein I have to say it: "Brokeback Mountain" is an absolutely phenomenal film, a sublime work of beauty with an ache at its core so enveloping you hardly notice it until you try to stand up at its somber end.

I would have imagined difficulty in praising the film this much, considering the gooey and ridiculous media discourse. But upon finally seeing it, all the talk seems trivial. It's an unexpectedly complex rumination on love and sexuality in a uniquely American context, where the tangible beauty of our mythic West collides with the hidden sores of a repressive social order. Lee's film is incredibly literary, stunningly photographed, and features flawless performances from its typically unimpressive cast.

And from a Texas paper, where they know cowboys, another 5 star review:

"Bet you didn't know that the American-Statesman uses a five-star system to rate movies. That's because our critics rarely -- almost never -- confer the highest rating, which is reserved for movies that will be viewed and discussed for years to come.

"Brokeback Mountain" is one of those movies.

A slow-moving, button-lipped Western romance, Ang Lee's wide-screen version of Annie Proulx's quick-moving, stub-tongued story worms its way into the viewer's consciousness, to remain there, a shifting, analog reality, for days or even weeks.

...

The media has fastened onto "Brokeback" as a "gay cowboy movie," and it will likely attract backlash from social conservatives. Some of this might be attributed to the movie's subtle social commentary. The fact that Jack and Ennis, under an ultra-violent Western code, could not seriously consider settling down bears on the current debate about gay marriage.

However, "Brokeback" goes beyond transitory opinion-making. Its relaxed storytelling, naturalistic language and just-out-of-reach characters draw the viewer into an inescapable romance. Due to the inscrutable logic of popular culture, it will appeal especially to women, surely one of the first Westerns to do so.

Is it a masterpiece, a "Casablanca" for its time? Perhaps not. Yet it's hard to question its status as one of the year's top movies. And it's certainly worth the kind of discussion a five-star review inevitably will provoke."

The entire point of this post being, maybe you're not giving the movie a chance, and maybe straight guys can find something worthwhile in this as well (all the above reviews being written by straight guys, and hell, even Ebert and Harry Knowles of "Aint it Cool" fame loved the movie).

Sometimes our prejudices get in the way of letting us discover things we might actually enjoy. I guess I know too many guys who were dragged kicking and screaming to see this movie by their girlfriends, who ended up really liking the movie. It's so silly and childish when you think about it. Every once in a while,

Much as I wish this were true. They got broadcast rights for the current show in .uk. Just like they've had in .us for a long time now. But oh how I wish you were right.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds30578.html

According to what I've heard, it will be equal to. Current DVD is 480P. The crippled component outputs of HD-DVD will be 480, as well. Here's the quote from Toshiba:

their HD-DVD Player will ONLY output high Def on the player's HDMI output the analogue output will be downrezed to 480 lines. link

That's funny, according to http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds26019.html the BBC are trialling HD-TV over digital terrestrial signal in the UK. So, exactly what resolution are you guys using that's "far, far higher"?

For all non-UK Slashdotters, this forum will bring you up to speed on what has been happening in the last week. - http://forum.digitalspy.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.p hp?f=139

I usually hate reality TV shows, but this one has me hooked, maybe because we have done the fantasic ATX http://www.kennedyspacecenter.com/visitKSC/atx.asp so some of the training looked familiar and it brought back some happy memories.

BTW, they are either the stupidest people ever.. or brilliant actors.

Jonathan

Oscar The Grouch Does California, Nevada & Arizona - http://www.mccormackj.fsnet.co.uk/oscarthegrouch

It's the same in the UK, or at least it used to be. Now it's starting to get more and more like US style ad breaks - see http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds26516.html for an example of what the broadcasters are trying. Luckily they're not having much luck at the moment.

I'd worry more about the upcoming requirement of a digitally "secure" connection (HMDI or secure DVI) to access full HDTV quality content. HDTV content sent over an "unsecure" connection (e.g. component video cables) will be downscaled.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds22406.html

No it isn't.

That was a daily mail headline I believe. It was bullshit when they printed it, and it's still bullshit.

The BBC proposed a possible rise to £150 by 2013. It's currently £126.50. In 7 years they want to increase the license fee by a whopping 18%. Big woop.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds25116.html

Note that they've asked for this... they haven't been granted it yet (although it sounds fairly reasonable to meet the cost of switchover).

Forgot a couple of links:

Screengrab from the cable box user interface : http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/article/ds22574.html

Telewest info on Teleport : http://www.telewest.co.uk/html/television/teleport /whatis.htm

Too true. I hope they will extend this future service to BBC3 and 4 also. Who could miss documentaries like "My Penis and I"? or "Human Mutants"? :)

The BBC can and often do broadcast alot of decent original content and haven't relent to the shame of reality TV. Thank God for the BBC.

Apparentlty not:

WHAT KIND OF DIGITAL TV RECEIVER WILL YOU NEED TO RECEIVE SKY'S HDTV SERVICE? Sky is introducing a new HDTV receiver that will initially be manufactured by Thomson.

Sky's HD service will also utilise the advanced compression technology MPEG4. MPEG4 is a more efficient means of compressing the data in a TV picture.

It works differently with UK's digital spectrum

Ummm No it doesn't Freeview uses half a dozen or so multiplexes.

But wasn't Von Stratten who invented the Internet?
Here's an interview with the man himself plus an internet post about his claim to inventing the internet.

P.S. in case you didn't get this, this is a reference to the tv show DR WHO.. Von Stratten is a fictional character. The first two sites above are by the BBC...

Sky don't make their advertising rates public (if they did you'd find them on the BRAD database), but from what I know about TV and media advertising I'd hazard a guess that it costs around £100,000 ($189,421 US) for a slot on Sky One, the station that broadcasts 24 here. The first two episodes of 24 which were shown back-to-back got a peak average of 680,000 viewers which means that the advertisers are paying £0.18 ($0.34 US) per viewer to advertise on there.

As a Brit who's been downloading 24 to keep up with the US schedule (I think episode 5 is shown here tonight as opposed to 10 in the US on Monday, and I plan to buy the DVDs when they come out as I've done with all previous seasons), I'd gladly pay 20p per episode to download them early. It's 20p in their pocket that they wouldn't have otherwise and when I watch commercial television I'll go and do something else while the ads are on anyway. Hell, I pay £30/month for Sky anyway.

CBS, NBC refuse to air gay-friendly church ad

The main media ouotlets seemed to have failed to pick up on this, and yet - if true - to me this seems like major news: Banning an advert that says 'anyone is welcome to our church' because the president was *thinking* about changing the Constitution to ban gay marrige.

Richard Bacon did this on (I think) Sky channel 247. "Flipside TV".

Oh, and looky loo, Flipside TV has been picked up by Comedy Central in the US and Bacon is expected to front it.

Someone warn the kinky prostitutes.

Oh, and the best thing on TV? Check out ch 695 on Sky.

Link
Link
Link

As highlighted by slashdot.org, according to a mailing list posting (mirror):

From: Lauren Weinstein

[...] Subject: Warning to IP Readers: When "The Debate Show" Calls -- Hang Up!

[...] They wanted me to debate a known spammer (who they wouldn't identify at the time) regarding the scourge of spam. It would be fun she implied, since the audience would of course be on my side.

[...] Crossballs is a rigged "reality" show, where real guests, who have been kept in the dark about the show's real format, are paired off against actors (playing the debate opponents) for the amusement of the live audience. The stories I read from persons recently on the show included descriptions of crude, sexually-oriented verbal attacks (and worse, like being handed various sexual "apparatus") and concerns that their reputations would be ruined once the shows aired.

The nature of Crossballs is confirmed by a couple of other sources. According to a gopusa.com commentary:

This show is not "The Debate Show," as advertised and the name they use to procure panelists, but "Crossballs" a newly produced show for Comedy Central, owned by Viacom and MTV networks, and is a spoof of political debate shows that seeks to mock conservatives with actors posing as some of the panelists.

One such real panelist, who thought the show was going to be a serious debate show, was a conservative activist from California who prepared to appear on the show to talk about the 2nd amendment. Jim March, whose account we have attached, is a 2nd amendment activist and was mocked and ridiculed by a "psychologist" who said he had sexual issues and offered him a two month supply of penis enlargement pills if he gave up his guns.

Nowhere in the material for "The Debate Show" and the press releases for the upcoming "Crossballs" do they make the connection, or let you in on the joke that the "actor panelists" debate the real panelists, complete with props and "live feed" video designed to mock and make fun of the real panelists and their conservative views.

And according to a June 15, 2004 story from digitalspy.co.uk, an entertainment newsblog:

Debate shows on US cable news channels such as CNN's Crossfire and MSNBC's Hardball are to be "skewered" by a new Comedy Central show, Crossballs.

The new show will feature comedians posing as experts debating real people who don't realise that the show is a sham.

"Shot in front of a live audience, Crossballs is a smart, comedic spoof of programs such as Crossfire, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and the entire Fox News Network," explains Comedy Central.

The show premieres on Tuesday, July 6 at 7:30pm ET and will air for eight consecutive weeks.

In similar display of mockery, according to a Jun 5, 2004 dc.indymedia.org story:

A small but determined group of about 60 demonstrators displayed their anger and disgust in front of the offices of Arlington defense contractor, CACI last week.

CACI is the firm recently implicated in the report by U.S. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba. CACI employees "were either directly or indirectly responsible for the abuse at Abu Ghraib," according to the report. Taguba strongly reco

For people that didn't read the article, it's actually a new show on Comedy Central called Crossballs. It's not MTV itself, or even a show on MTV.

Comedy Central also produces the great The Daily Show, which I'm sure a few guests are upset they appeared on after it airs. (Host Jon Stewart recently jokingly asked on the show why anyone is still willing to appear). It's more widely known, though, and they seem to be open about who they are.

This fire has also effected Digital TV (and some analogue TV) to Northern Ireland, certainly a key communications trunk.

See Digital Spy

As someone in this thread says I'm suprised more transmitters aren't effected

Cox and ESPN had a similar type of battle. Both sides would take out ads for their side. I don't think it got to the point of scrolling messages on the channels, though. They settled their differences a few weeks ago. Good thing for Cox. ESPN is one of the most watched cable channels and I bet a lot of sports fans would have jumped to DirecTV if Cox lost ESPN.