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End of an Era As Pioneering BBC3 Becomes an Online-Only Station (betanews.com)
Mark Wilson writes: 13 years ago, BBC3 launched in the UK. Last night, the TV station broadcast over the airwaves for the last time. In a bid to slash expenditure, the youth-oriented channel that launched countless comedy careers is now only available online. The likes of Being Human, The Mighty Boosh, Gavin and Stacey, and the like will live on, but only on the web — which the BBC is spinning as an opportunity to be freed from the constraints of regular scheduling. The change has been known about for some time now, and there have been a number of campaigns and petitions to try to get the BBC to change its mind.
Not sure if serious, so I'll answer anyway.
No - the BBC is not the only game in town when it comes to television and radio in the UK. The BBC is uniquely-funded through a "television license" which anyone who watches live broadcast television must pay, regardless whether they watch the BBC's channels or not. There is no commercial advertising on the BBC when watched in the UK (though I understand this is not necessarily the case with the versions of the BBC that are shown internationally).
But there's also the commercial broadcasters:
ITV (a regionalized network of broadcast companies) operates a number of channels
Channel 4 (also broadcasts E4, more4, Film4 (which makes original film content as well as screening Hollywood and independent films)
Channel 5 (again, they operate a few channels).
Sky (satellite TV provider, which has its own channels, but also broadcasts channels from overseas, typically US channels - their set-top boxes also have access to a streaming catch-up service with access to download TV show box sets for you to watch. Sky is hideously expensive, though)
There's the usual assortment of TV shopping channels and adult entertainment
The BBC also has its 24-hour news channel.
Telephone giant BT also has its own service, but it's a streaming service that is (as far as I know) only open to BT Broadband (DSL) and BT Infinity (FTTC) customers.
And we can watch Netflix and Amazon Prime here too. Just not with as much content as the US gets (this is true of Netflix everywhere though).
He's Jesus, for Christ's sake.
So, in England...they only had 3 channels...and are now down to 2 on TV?
Pre-digital, there weren't many. We only hit 4 in 1982 and were up to 5 by the nouglties: 2 BBC (public), 1 ITV (commercial), Channel 4 (public-owned-commercial) and the unimaginatively named Channel 5.
Now, on terrestrial digital, The BBC (public, no ads) had 8 channels (BBC1,2,3,4, BBC News, BBC Parliament & 2 kids channels) although 3, 4 only run from 7pm, before that the kid's channels use the same bandwidth. Then there's a shedload of non-BBC channels: ITV, Channel 4, Channel 5 now each have 3-4 digital channels, not counting '+1's and HD versions, plus numerous others (I've lost track of who owns what). Of course, the advent of digital also created a 5-fold increase in the available license fee and advertising revenue, to fill this plethora of new channels with premium content :->
Sadly, we also have shopping channels. Prize for the biggest waste of bandwidth (savour this blow by blow):
QVC (a shopping channel, if you need a stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer )
QVC HD (See the stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer in glorious 1080i)
QVC HD +1 (time shifted by an hour in case you'd missed out on that stretchy fat-dissolving bra with integrated pressure washer on regular QVC).
I don't want to live on this planet any more.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.