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New Fee For Internet-Capable PCs In Germany
An anonymous reader writes "German online news sites heise.de and spiegel.de has stories, that from April 2005 on a fee of about 17 to 18 EUR per month must be paid to the national broadcasters in Germany for personal computers in private households, which have possible access to the internet. The fee must not be paid, if it is already paid for a TV set. Companies are said to be obliged to pay that fee from 2007 on." Those who don't read German should make use of the Fish.
...is one of my very favorite things.
More regulation and more arbitrary fees for something people don't use.
Now I don't only pay the fscking music industry money for the cds I do my backups on (a certain amount of every blank cd you buy goes to the music industry, can you believe it), I'll also have to pay for my computer I certainly don't use to watch public broadcasting tv. On top of that, not only do I have to pay, but every frigging company with a internet connection will have to pay the fee for every computer connected to the net, this is just insane.
The number of people in Germany without a TV set but with a "internet-capable" PC (RS 232? :) ) is incredible low and only for these people there will be any change to notice.
If your income is below a certain line, you can be freed to have to pay anything.
In toto, this is not an Internet tax but just a closure of a gap for those people who have abolished their TV set in order to get the TV stream via http.
That does indeed sound very terifying unitll you consider what goes on in America, the land of the free, the home of the brave, the moral role model for the world. Imagine if in the England TV's were free as in freedom... you could have 0 or 10 doesn;t matter nearly free as in beer. There are so many out there that there are literally very few families employed or unemployed that can't afford one. They are everywhere and they are free to watch, listen to, or take out whatever chips you want. What a great place England would become, they would finally start to catch up to America. Imagine if in england parents had to battle the media for their childs mind. Thay had to battle against the $12,000,000,000 every year spend on television advertising each year directed at children.
Finally parents could fight the good fight and battle buying their childrens mind with their own meager salery. When they finally break down they would have to simply submit to whatever cereal their child puts in the card at the supermarket, regardless of what the parents want their children to eat becuase they wont eat it if its not TRIX (R) (TM) (C) cereal with the fucking rabbit and everything.
Finally you could do away with the BBC, the last source of REAL news and get the bullshit that is on American TV every day. And hey if you dont like the broadcast television in America you are free as in freedom to buy cable or satelite service. You get hundreds more chanels of brain rotting none-sense and if you upgrade to the premium package you get undisputed most fair and balanced TV news on the planet, FOX news.
If only England would quit wallowing in their own filth AKA the BBC. If only the rest of the world would catch up with the leaps and bounds America is making in bringing mindless consumerism to ever single citizen then you would truly be happy, short of being happy you would surely not bitch about the fees you pay!
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep
Subscribing to this service will cost you $15 a month. Not subscribing will cost you $1600. Those are your only choices. Take your pick.
Uh, not entirely correct. You can choose not to have a TV at all, and therefore pay nothing...
I think the UK's TV-licensing system is quite sensible - we pay a fee once per year, which goes to the bbc, and in turn we are able to recieve both the BBC's terrestrial channels, it's digital channels (around 6 more, I believe), and the license fee also funds the BBC's 6 national radio channels, and all the local radio stations around the country. All advert free, 24/7. That doesn't sound like such a bad deal to me...
We used to have a system like that in the Netherlands, where you would have to pay a certain amount of money (~50 Euro??) per year if you owned a TV set. This was in a country where probably 95 percent of the people has a TV. The system involved TV ads that reminded you to pay and an army of inspectors to check if those who didn't pay were not secretly watching.
Occasionally politicians do have common sense, so they got rid of the system a few years ago. Now it's just payed by taxes, regardless if you are watching or not. This was a big win: no more bureaucracy, no more paranoia for the inspectors (we never payed in my student house) and the state saved around 20MEuro instantly on salaries.
karma police: arrest this man, he talks in maths; he buzzes like a fridge, he's like a detuned radio. [radiohead]
For digital, remember that it's not only the BBC's digital channels your license fee goes toward, but also funding the BBC's contribution to operating the Freeview infrastructure (40 digital channels).
I care. A lot.
See, I don't have a TV. Or a radio. Simply because not only are they exclusively full of trash, they're also full of advertising, which I detest deeply (it's aimed at the lowest common denominator - which I am *not* part of).
So, I don't pay the GEZ.
Now, suddenly I have to pay the GEZ to fund some broadcasting agency I couldn't give a flying rats fart for? Yes? Because my PC could - could! - be upgraded easily and used to actually see TV.
That's the reason.
That's the only reason the powerful tool on my desk is going to cost me money every month, and not just a couple of cents. And without me getting anything at all in return, mind you.
Bah.
Free PC version of ChipWits at http://www.breueronline.de/klaus/chipwits/
Lacking a picture tube that emanates detectable RF, can an LCD TV avoid detection from these roving vans?
being a legal alien in Sweden has it's downsides and one of them is the fact that Sweden has had a very similar law since the birth of public television-
So far nothing for the computers, but trust me when I say that I'm counting the days until some smartass brings that one up.
I _HATE_ these laws. I hardly watch any television at all, yet I still have to pay just as much money as the guy who never turns his set off. If I watch three hours of TV in a month then that's a new record. If I watch TV then it's from a DVD - I have no use for the R/F-tuner.
Sure, Sweden has two government-funded channels that show somewhat decent-quality content, but being public channels they have to cater to every demographic and that means that maybe 5% of the offerings are interesting to me.
I grudgingly pay this tax, but I'm trying to find any loophole I can in the law. I'd be happy to pay for my use (which would amount to something along the lines of US$0.03/month) but taxing it like this is FASCISM in my opinion.
What's next? They put an "ear-tax" on anyone who's born with earlobes? You have to pay 15 bucks a month for the use of your ears - and if you object you have the option of cutting them off or paying!
Ah, there's nothing like good old hidden fascism!
I enjoy large posteriors and I cannot prevaricate.
...What the fuck are you trying to say? In what manner is "what goes on in America" more frightening than this? The fact that people buy shit? As opposed to what? People...not buying shit?
One minute you call BBC the "last source of REAL news" and the next you're calling it "filth". Which extreme is it? Your post makes less sense than John Kerry's position(s) on Iraq. If you're going to be cynical you could at least practice some consistency.
The license fee is one of the reasons Red Dwarf is so good - Grant Naylor pitched the show to the BBC for several years, turning down offers from ITV purely because they wanted the extra time a half hour slot on the Beeb gives you by not having adverts (around six minutes extra, which is considerable in a 30 minute show).
Looking at it from outside does seem odd (you need a license to own a TV?!), but when you consider the amount of content the Beeb produces advert free, on TV, radio and the Internet, it isn't so bad. I consider a lifetime of license fee well worth it for Red Dwarf and HHGttG alone.
Stuart
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
Not many people will be hurt by this:
Everybody will get hurt by that because companies will have to pay the fee, too. Those costs will make goods and services more expensive, they will make German exports less competitive, and they will increase prices for German consumers. The money doesn't even get transferred just to any other industry, it gets transferred to an industry (German public broadcasting) that creates products with very little potential for export.
And if those fees will have to be paid by educational institutions for their Internet-connected PCs, as seems likely, it will put a further strain on already tight educational budgets.
And for what? How many people with Internet-connected PCs are watching German public television at work? Employers generally don't permit this, and, be honest, licking envelopes is probably more fun than daytime German public television.
if you already have a TV set, you already pay this fee. (Most households already have a TV set and pay 48.45 EUR every three months to the GEZ.)
But the households that don't have a TV set probably don't have one because they just don't want television at all. Since the GEZ fee is ostensibly a user fee, it makes little sense to charge these people.
(BTW, the point that public broadcasting should be financed from taxes and not have a special authority for this is IMHO very valid. Would mean less bureaucracy, and a more fair distribution of burden.)
This, I fully agree with. Public broadcasting should be supported through taxes--tax support means lower expenses (compared to having a separate billing apparatus) and it automatically makes contributions progressive. And I think that tax-supported public broadcasting is very valuable; it just has to serve a public purpose. The German "public" broadcasters, however, are just behavving like heavily subsidized private broadcasters.
Well, yeah, I sort of knew about this, though not to this detail. I'm not positive it's worth getting too bent about. It certainly does raise some questions:
1)If you own a TV in the UK, can you receive any broadcast programming other than the BBC?
2)Is cable service available there?
3)If cable is available, do the cable companies build the BBC channels in on their feed and then bill you (and presumably pay the BBC; you wouldn't have to twice), or if not can you tell the BBC to piss off because you don't watch them (showing your cable bill in explanation of your tele)?
4)Does any of this change if you can show you aren't using any broadcast functionality? Like, if it's plugged into your playstation, and when the BBC guys come in you show them that there's no antenna plugged in and the channels don't come in at all?
5)Do they sell TV's without broadcast capability? Owners of which the BBC presumably wouldn't harrass?
6)This local oscillator thingie...is that specific to CRT's?
7)Is the local oscillator specific to broadcast reception? (Would the hypothetical brodcastless TV's get picked up by the wardriving BBC guys?)
8)Is the local oscillator part of the tuner? Like, would a "monitor" that had inputs for rca/component/svideo/etc. qualify, if it didn't have a tuner? Could you plug an LCD projector into a digital cable box and not pay the BBC?
9)Are radios that pick up TV band sold in the UK? Are they taxed? Do they have local oscillators?
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
Actually, *I* care.
:(
I have no TV nor radio, since I have no time to watch TV and the radio stations are broadcasting bullshit ("adult contemporary" on almost all stations).
I'd greatly love to pay for a service that actually seems worth paying for, but there is none
Now the other side: I own a computer, DSL, a beamer for gaming video, several dozen DVDs. What should I do? Disconnect my computer or just accept the fact that finally that asshole who still can't believe that I don't even own a radio clock to wake me up in the morning has a reason to have me PAY for internet access?
I decided against TV and radio (not against shoutcast or my bought DVDs, though). Please bear that in mind.
Did you know that my not so favourite "public" radio station (Radio Bremen) is currently wasting money (85 million EUR!) to move into a huge new building with a nice view of the river, without ANY reason to do so? They are broadcasting the most superfluos programme I have ever heard, yet I can't even financially escape this idiocy.
Radio Bremen broadcasts four radio programmes and a part-time TV programme - for TWO cities (Bremen & Bremerhaven, being the country of Bremen).
85 Million EUR... for a nice view of the river...
For the 750,000 citizens of Bremen...
Do you understand why the current situation with German public TV & Radio is Not A Good Idea?
You also pay for hospitals which you will never goto.
Roads you will never drive on.
Schools you may never attend.
You often pay for things you don't use for the 'greater good' of the people on a country. The BBC is an invaluble resource of news and educational programming. It's paid for by *almost* everyone in the UK for the greater good.
Decades ago, television was the only mass-market way of distributing multimedia content. It was expensive to create television stations and the medium allowed only a small amount of total content to be distributed every day, so content needed to be selected. In order to keep television from being taken over by political or corporate interests, it made sense to create publicly supported television stations.
But that's not the situation anymore. In 2004, anybody can get their information on-line and anybody else can access it. More and more people get all their information from the Internet. There is little need for public support of television anymore. The money would be better spent on creating publicly accessible Internet archives of all legislative sessions, debates, and other political interactions.
What this is really about now is that powerful but obsolete institutions don't want to go away. German public television knows that they are threatened by the Internet and are losing viewers. That's why they are so desparate to put content on-line and claim that people have to pay for those offerings.
Remember that you already paid for the commercial TV crap every time you buy something in your local supermarket. All prices of consumer goods are marked up to pay for the commercials shown on TV, that in turn are paying for the programmes.
So you have been paying all the time, even when you don't have a TV.
The licence fee in the UK actually only pays for the BBC, which is two channels. These channels have NO COMMERCIALS. They are also free of pressure from advertisers and political groups. They're even free from pressure from ratings. (The other three channels are free-to-air, but aren't involved in the licence fee and make money through advertising.)
The BBC, therefore, can concentrate on one thing: QUALITY. Not only is it the best news source in the world, but it provides the most eclectic mix of prgrammes on TV. BBC1 is also the most watched TV channel in the country - so clearly whatever it is they're doing is working.
Given the option of the rubbish we get on our pay-extra-for sattelite channels (which is invariably American), or quality BBC progamming, I'm happy to pay the few quid a year to maintain an independent TV company.
I love the quaint response to the TV detector vans too. We've had them here since the 70's, but they're more of a PR excercise than anything else. Think about it: if it means spending half a million pounds on a detector van, or hiring an intern to take a look through the licence register address list, which do you think is easier? They've blown and blustered about the vans for at least 25 years, but you ask most people and they've never encountered one.
Of course, this will all seem very odd to Americans, because you're not used to the idea of TV that has no political or advertising association. I was appalled at how bad things like FOX news really is when I went to NY a couple of years ago. It's not so much news as a Republican campaign instrument. Most people in the UK (according to the polls they do every few years) like the fact we can have quality and independent news.
This is absoulutely INSANE.
The German State has, to a greater or lesser extent, discouraged ownership of Internet access.
Free dialup no longer exists in Germany. By setting the minimum possible cost of Internet access to 17 Euros per month, the very poorest have been excluded from the Internet.
What's worse is that this tax does not even fall upon those who consume the material the tax money funds - it falls upon everyone, indiscriminately.
And this has been done in the name of supporting a State run enterprise!
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Toby
Well, the system used in the US seems to work well enough - where ads are used to pay for the production and transmission of television shows.
I personally like the fact that I can own a particular electronic device and do as I please with it. Why should I have to pay an annual fee to own such a device regardless of how often or for what purpose it is used? Maybe I would like to own a TV simply so I can play console games or watch DVD's... that's my choice.
Perhaps tuners should be independent of the CRT and controlled via an access card - similar to satellite TV. Services should have recurring fees, not personal property.
It's very hard to get the full political spectrum in the U.S.. The conservative side is well-represented (most religious stations, Fox News, etc.), there are centrist-rightist networks like CNN, and even center-left networks like Comedy Central (though there doesn't appear to be a left-leaning news station, jokes about CBS/Dan Rather aside.) There really is no liberal television network, but there are many conservative television networks.
There is ONE liberal radio network in the U.S. -- Pacifica, and it has very few stations (though many of its shows are played on a number of campus radio stations at colleges across the country.) There's also the center-left network that the Clintonites recently started, though that's only barely getting off the ground.
You really don't realize how far to the right the media has swung in the U.S. until you look at centrist broadcasting from the rest of the world (with the exception of fundamentalist middle eastern nations)
Okay, so sometimes the BBC does show crap, but it also produces high quality drama, comedy, news, documentaries, education (including school and university courses) and more. It has two channels devoted to advert-free kids viewing. It has regional TV and radio. It has terrestrial digital broadcasting. They even have shows where tit appears or a profanity is uttered without the screaming moral minority being able to do a damned thing about it.
Okay, so the tax is compulsary for TV owners. But how much does *your* TV subscription cost? How much advertising must you put up with (despite subscribing)? How many products do you subconsciously buy because of that advertising? Who are your TV stations accountable to? Whose agenda is driving their news and politics? What remit do they use when producing programming for - advertising, ratings, or what?
It wouldn't surprise me if you were directly or indirectly paying several factors higher for considerably worse quality programming.
Quantity of channels isn't everything. In Britain a majority of people have only five channels of TV. Two of those are BBC channels paid for by the license fee, one (Channel 4) is mostly owned by the government and the other two are entirely privately owned but have government controls that limit their advertising and control minimum levels of news and public service broadcasts. The programmes available on these channels is largely intelligent, informative, entertaining, and not repeated too often. We also can go for longer than five minutes without getting the attention span beaten out of us with advertising.
We also have Cable, Satellite and Digital Terrestrial TV available, with huge numbers of channels. With the exception of Digital Terestrial, it's nearly* all crap. It's filled wall to wall with American sitcoms, reality TV, and endless repeats.
Freeview (Digital Terestrial) TV looks like it might be a way out of this largely because it is limited in the broadcase bandwidth available but it still has quite a large number of repeats.
Given the choice between US style programmes repeated endlessly on hundreds of channels, or a few channels of quality programmes paid for through the BBC and other state-mandated (not controlled) expenses, I will go for what we have.
*Note that I said nearly. Sky One happens to show some things I want to watch, like Buffy, the Simpsons and Stargate Atlantis and it doesn't put too much advertising in it's frontline shows. It does however repeat them each about 8 times across two channels, with much more advertising.
A latent existence
Well, lets be fair here, to quote the tv licensing site:
"If you use or install television receiving equipment to receive or record television programme services you are required by law to have a valid TV Licence."
So, if as in ur example you just own a tv to watch DVDs and play console games, you would not need to pay for a tv license.
Paul
We get first class TV for £10 a month.
THat includes hits like "Walking with dinosaurs", "The Blue Planet", the Athens 2004 Olympics broadcast and webcast, critical journalists that keep politicians in check, a classical music only radio station.
All this and more for a meagre £10 a month.
No, it does not bother me.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You also pay for schools although you might not have any children, you also pay for health care you might not need, you pay for infrastructure you'll never use. That said, I agree with the GP that the GEZ should be abolished and replaced by a tax-financed system. Doesn't make sense to have two parallel systems in place.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
Consider the problem at hand: How to fund public broadcasting adequately Notice how our German friend skips right over that without even blinking? One really has to credit the German government for raising such cooperative, unquestioning citizens. Rather than force all people to pay for something they may or may not agree with (which is one definition of tyranny - are the Germans happy they're back on this course again?), quit running state-sponsored media. No wonder Germans boast that they never have political scandels like the US - there is nobody to expose and communicate them!
How about people growing up with the idea that if they're not constantly buying shit, that there is something wrong with them? That's how us North Americans get raised these days. Looking back on my own life and how I developed, I have no doubt that there would be certain improvements (in the family I grew up in as well) if we had never seen or heard of TV.
Oh and the "filth" comment was very likely sarcasm, which much of the post was dripping with.
US viewers have far more detailed and unbiased coverage of politics available than German viewers: a vibrant network of public radio and television stations, C-SPAN, and numerous high-quality commercial offerings.
I don't doubt that. Of course, in Germany you also find a lot of different news sources on TV, radio, nespapaers, web sites...
Yes, Americans watch garbage because they choose to, not because they have to.
I guess that's unfortunately common in most societies: people want to be entertained and not informed.
Our largest newspaper (Bild) is complete garbage, so are many things you see on commercial TV. But of course they show it because people watch it, and not because they are unable to produces something on a higher intellectual niveau (OK, maybe they *are* unable...).
But it will affect many businesses and (probably) educational and not-for-profit institutions. And the extra costs that those businesses incur will have to be passed on to you just as surely as if that money had been taken out of your own pocket.
Naturally German companies already voiced their concerns. The last reaction I've read from the pro-PC fee camp is that the fees would be required from the companies on a per-site basis, that is it doesn't matter whether you have 20 or 20000 PCs in an office complex, you always pay 18Euro/month. So for most businesses the extra costs should be negligible. On the other hand, it makes this fee even more ridiculous: most home users don't pay, because they have a TV anyway, companies usually don't pay that much, because they pay only once per site... So they can't expect to much new income, they just add bureaucracy(and annoy people).
That's a shame. If I were to head into the living room and flip on the TV right now, I'd have my choice of the following intelligent, informative, and entertaining channels:
9 channels devoted exclusively to news; ;
11 channels devoted to science, nature, or history;
5 channels devoted to education or public affairs;
6 channels devoted to children's programming;
6 channels devoted to religion and religious affairs
3 channels devoted exclusively to providing "family friendly" entertainment;
2 channels that show nothing but classic old movies;
7 channels devoted to various genres of music;
9 sports channels;
a host of specialty channels, including one with nothing but cooking and food-related shows, one channel about home maintenance and improvement, one for fitness and exercise, one for computers and technology, and one entire channel devoted to nothing but golf.
But hey, quantity isn't everything, I'm told ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
There are two problems with your rant. The first is that part of the cost goes towards things like ensuring you get good reception and the second is that surveys show most UK people *like* and consider the TV license funding the BBC to be a good thing. In the UK a TV capture card requires a TV license (the license covers several things so its not one per device). The arrangement we have now (which goes back about 70 years) is reviewed regularly to see if it is still the right model.
Secondly the US does precisely the same thing with other services. The UK places most taxes for funding roads on fuel, so those who use it pay for it. The US near enough arbitarily charges all its citizens for road use however much they use it and however much damage they do. And I'm sure US folks are happy with that side of it.
Not to say we don't have a current problem case - if you want commercial satellite TV but not digital/analogue broadcast and the BBC you can't opt out as you can't opt out by not having a TV.
I can see the UK eventually extending TV licensing but not to PC's rather to broadband connections - which makes a lot more sense.
PS: One amusing side story is that 90% of TV license offences are not the result of their magic vans (most of which are fake and empty) but neighbours reporting people they don't like.
(Bush and Kerry excepted, of course). You can always decide to not have a TV, as I did until I was in my mid-30s. Then you can change and have cable, as I did. Then, later, you can decide to get rid of cable, like my wife and I just did, and watch movies and get our 'regular' news off the internet, newspapers (also on the internet by the way), and editorials off of blogs. (I almost forgot: you have Mother Jones, the Atlantic Monthly, the National Review...)
Half of the secret here is recognizing that you do indeed have options. Of course, Fox, the Washington Post, and many others would like you to believe they are absolutely essential to your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness...
If you don't pay your insurance premium, the insurance company will cut you off, and the government will stop you from driving your car. If caught, you'll be sentenced in a government court, attended by government lawyers (including a government lawyer for you, if you can't pay your own). The fines are enforced by government cops, with government guns, and refusals to comply are met with government jails. The US has all kinds of mandatory government fees for private corporations. This German fee happens to support their private/public broadcasters.
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make install -not war
Hard to get the full spectrum? Surely you jest! :-) For a more liberal bent on the news, you can listen to NPR, some talk radio, CNN, MSN, CBS, ABC, NBC, NYT, WP, LATimes, etc.
The conservative side is well-represented (most religious stations, Fox News, etc.), there are centrist-rightist networks like CNN, and even center-left networks like Comedy Central (though there doesn't appear to be a left-leaning news station, jokes about CBS/Dan Rather aside.)
CNN is center right compared to whom? I think it depends on your perspective. For someone who is very Liberal, I guess CNN could be center-right, but I've _never_heard it called that here in the States.
As for Dan, he's known for going after the Republican Presidents and playing soft-ball with the Democrat Presidents, so nobody was surprised at the NG story he presented. I think most people were surprised at the poor quality of the fake evidence he presented. :-)
You really don't realize how far to the right the media has swung in the U.S. until you look at centrist broadcasting from the rest of the world (with the exception of fundamentalist middle eastern nations)
I think we need some geographic context here. When people complain about the American media being liberal, they aren't comparing it to the rest of the world. The comment is specifically in the context of American media.
One reason they're dumb is because they're not reached by media connecting them to anyone different from them. The Red/Blue State map shows that the coasts are Blue, because we're in contact with diversity, and can understand it from familiar experience. While Red States fear diversity, because they're ignorant of it. It looks like national media have a complete footprint, but that's as illusory as cellphone coverage maps. Many of the Red Staters are busy at monster truck mudpulls, hunting small animals, highschool football games, and even the healthy hiking and canoeing, rather than immersed in the mediasphere. Combine the isolated, homogenous experience of the Red States with the braindrain of their most intellectually ambitious to the coasts, and you have a huge region which can be fed any propaganda through their parallel media channels of talk radio and church mimeographs. Since their smart people are busy challenging the coastal propaganda as consumers, raising it to both enlightening accuracy and sophisticated distortions, the stuff working its way through their deserted hometowns is sentimental, ignorant, and inbred. The greatest challenge to thinkers in this country is to include these intellectual barrens in the mediasphere. That will both improve their access to diverse ideas by reducing their alienation, and improve the sophisticated media content by exposing it to to a new population of Americans who haven't yet bought into the media paradigm.
I think that it's too late for broadcast media. I think the arrival of multimedia mobile devices is right on time to fill this void, especially when someone delivers a UI that works as well in a semiliterate's pickup truck as alongside the Sunday crossword puzzle.
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make install -not war
This is why you never see American TV shows and networks outside the United States; because it's all 'bullshit'.
Actually there is only one reason that American programs are so "popular" outside the US, and that is becuse the people who make them make all their money showing them in America, so they have nothing to loose by selling them dirt cheap overseas to make a bit more money. The local production companies can't produce programs for a price better than the Americans are selling theirs for, and since all the networks are doing it the public can't really just change the channel to non-American programing. This is why Australia (and many other countries) have laws that say ech network must have a minimum amount of local content (25% here I think).
Come to think about it doen't America have laws saying that each network can show a MAXIMUM of 25% non-American programming? It would explain a lot (could someone please tell me if this is true).
I have a solution but you're not going to like it. (Something I say far too forten to my boss)