News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do I do?.

Re:I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do... by rprasad on Sunday July 29, 2012 @03:41AM (#4307817)
Pay for it. Broadcasting the Olympics costs NBC lots of money. These deals are how they pay those costs. (And if it wasn't NBC, it would be CBS, ABC, or Fox.)

One of the hazards of giving up living television is that...you give up live television. NBC is not obligated to do squat for you if it can't make money from you. It's a business, not a charity.

And stop praising the BBC. It's not free. Brits pay a mandatory tax to support the BBC, so it is no different from cable/satellite TV in the U.S.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do... by porlw on Sunday July 29, 2012 @05:58AM (#4308018)
I wish people would stop harping on about the UK TV licence fee.

TV in the US is not free - you pay for it every time you buy something made by a company that spends money advertising on TV.

It's practically impossible to opt out of paying for TV in the US. At least in the UK you can opt out if you genuinely don't want to watch anything.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do... by cheald on Monday July 30, 2012 @03:12AM (#4311252)
Frankly, I'd rather pay £150/year for all the BBC programming (without commercials, including full online on-demand streaming) than $720/year for my cable company's "basic" package (which I continue to pay for by sitting through advertising for a third of the show's airtime anyway). If we bought that model to the US, I'd be ecstatic.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:I'm an American and I want to watch the Olympics. What do... by dt7 on Sunday July 29, 2012 @05:10AM (#4307958)
It is different in that if they ever do a bad job, they get a lot more pressure put on them (occasionally from the government - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18512995). They are also monitored to make sure they at least try to have no overly political/commercial bias.
[ Parent | on HN ]