Southcoast TV Meeting - Blarney/Cloghroe

thejuggler

Just an update on this for anyone in the area. Southcoast are having a public meeting next Tuesday (June 8th) in the Blarney Castle Hotel for anyone who receives their service in this area. The service which had been off air for two weeks is now displaying a message about this. If they don't get enough subscribers the transmitters will remain off air.
If you have sky digital but not ITV and Channel 4 they're the best option at the moment so are deserving of support I think.

thejuggler

Email from SouthCoast about the meeting

Due to lack of support the transmitter serving the Cloghroe/Blarney region has been taken off air. Having invested over €20,000 in installation costs and over €5,000 per year in maintenance the level of support received in return was almost non-existent. To date in 2004 only 2 x viewers in the Cloghroe/Blarney region have paid the €75 annual subscription.

A public meeting will be held in the Blarney Castle Hotel on Tuesday 8th June at 8.30 p.m. For all those interested in retaining the Southcoast service. Southcoast will defer any final decision on the future of the Cloghroe/Blarney transmitter until after this meeting.

Please try to attend and please advise others of the meeting.

BrianD

Goes to show that the community deflector system model is not sustainable in the long run. Having said that, I do believe that there is a place for these community sysytems but it would have use some sort of encryption and have a different business model.

I thought South Coast were going to develope a new digital platform?

Mike 1972

Theis "unsustainable business model" has operated quite succesfully in other parts of Co Cork for almost 20 years.

If a business (lets say a Hotel) in a certain town goes out of business do you suddenly assume that every hotel in the country is about to go under or even declare free market capitalism to have failed ?

Surely the failure of BSB twelve years ago would suggest that Satellite TV is a flawed business model as well. NTL's financial difficulties a couple of years back show theres no future in Cable or MMDS either and the fact that the California electricity company is technically bankrupt means that the ESB should shut up shop and we can all go back to candlelight

BrianD

I think the South Community TV model as a community orientated initiative is to be admired but as I said, ultimately it is unsustainable. The fact that a €20K investment in equipment and €5K operating costs are being funded by two payments of €75 demonstrates this!

the vast majority of TV deflectors are poor quality and underfunded. Viewers want quality and diversity of choice which can't be provided by deflectors.

TV deflectors pre-date MMDS and Sky Digital and for many viewers it was the only option. I suspect that people, now that there are alternatives, are willing to pay Chorus or Sky Digital for that channel choice and a decent picture.

Even when the deflector system was the only option for multi-channel viewing, I doubt if all viewing households were paying their voluntary subscription. This is a huge flaw in the model.

I believe that there is a role for South Coast TV in the digital age as a community TV distributor. Voluntary payments would have to go in favour of mandatory subscription policed by a STB. The costs would rise but more importantly the platform would be Irish owned and operated. Unfortunately, the Irish government has no broadcasting policy or vision and its dithering will probably kill of South Coast and Irish broadcasting would be too far behind. Perhaps we could sell the lot to Murdock and be done with it.

Mike 1972

The lack of encryption is one of the strong selling points of the deflector system though as it keeps the costs down and keeps multiroom viewing and video timeshift functionality simple and cheap, This is why many homes with sky digital continue to use the deflectors as well. Until low cost FTV digiboxs with subscribtion free recording facilities become available there will always be a place in the market for deflectors

BrianD

The fundamental question is are the the community willing to pay for it? The answer seems to be no. The quality and desirability of delectors will continue to diminish as there will be no income to cover new equipment and new features. While many people may continue to use deflectors the money to provide and operate these services has to come from somewhere! People find the deflectors handy as the signal is free. I doubt if they would pay a sub for a Digibox and a deflector.

Deflectors as they stand are low cost but can't compete with the advances of competitor distribution platforms. Ironically, the communities that they served for many years seem to be abandoning them!

byte

€75 per year doesn't seem too expensive to me. As the system is FTA though, there probably isn't much Southcoast can do about it. I wonder what the signals from their transmitter is like. If it cost €20k to construct, picture quality must be very good!

BrianD

€75 is cheap for multichannel TV for a year but is a lot when added to your Sky or Chorus sub.