September 27th, 1999

I Want My Foxtel. Sort of.

  In Australia, we're fairly new to the concept of paying for our television programming. Until a few years ago we only had around five (depending where you live) free-to-air broadcasters. One of the larger companies now offering pay TV is Foxtel. Foxtel have both a cable service plus a satellite one. The satellite service customers are mostly those from the failed Galaxy venture.

  For the most part cable and satellite subscribers get the same things, same channels. Sure, cable has Bloomberg and Fox Weather which satellite doesn't, but perhaps we can overlook this. Heck, I'd be happy to overlook this otherwise, but it has only added to the annoyance I feel. Why am I so annoyed? Well, for your twenty-three channels of foxtel (the basic cable package), you'll pay $42.95/month. Twenty-one channels of the basic package will cost you $56.95/month on satellite! That's fourteen more dollars for two less channels! After all, you can have all the channels on cable (forgetting the porn for a moment) for $56.85, ten cents less than the basic satellite fee! Getting all the channels on satellite (again, forgetting the porn) will set you back $69.95. Plus, if you want your Foxtel on more than one TV and have satellite, an extra decoder will cost you $29.95 per month, as opposed to the cable price of $9.95.Rip off? I'd say so.

  "Why the heck this difference in pricing?", I hear the voices within my head ask. I suppose there's a number of weak arguments Foxtel could throw our way. Let's examine and discount each of these.

1. Equipment. It could be suggested that the satellite, dish and decoder are expensive things to keep operational. Well I expect they're a whole lot cheaper than the cable roll-out which never made it very far. Plus there's the fact Foxtel picked up the dishes and decoders for peanuts once Galaxy/Australis went down.
2. Quality. A very weak argument. Apparently picture quality through satellite is better than cable. You'll only notice this if you've seen both delivery systems in action and paid attention. Consumers aren't all that fussed where picture quality is concerned - I think we can see that through the demise of Beta (superior to VHS, but never as popular). Furthermore, things such as birds and heavy rain will tend to render your satellite system useless.
3. Programming. This factor goes for both cable and satellite. Take a look at some of the selling points Foxtel use to encourage us to sign up.
   1. Sport: I'm not much for sport, but I know there's two dedicated sports channels, full of repeats. You can watch last night's match, as shown live on seven or nine. You can watch the NRL Grand Final on Fox Sports 2, simulcast on Channel 9.
   2. Movies: Titanic at 8:30 tonight... and 10:00 tomorrow morning, and 5:30 next wednesday, and repeated at various times for the next twelve months. A couple of years later it'll turn up on Encore.
   3. Comedy: dedicated comedy source, thecomedychannel. Coming soon, Ned and Stacey, that so-so show you may have seen a while ago on free-to-air TV, oh and it's still on Fox8 at the moment. Old episodes of South Park, repeated mercilessly. TV1 shows Seinfeld and Mad About You, as still airing on channel 10.
   4. Documentary: Michael Palin's Pole to Pole; showing on The Lifestyle Channel, straight from BBC World. You may have seen it before on the ABC. Discovery Channel's Next Step, a show about new scientific and technolgical breakthroughs - the last episode was made in 1997.
   5. Music: During summer, Channel [v] doesn't even have any presenters. Music videos, some more music videos.. oh and sometimes they'll show us a skateboarding video, yay. They got rid of the good looking presenters, dammit...
   6. Other: Watch Stan Zemanek on channel 10, then on Fox8, then on FX, all in the one day! Relive the magic that was Prisoner on UKTV. John Laws has a show on Foxtel, need I say more?

  That's but a glimpse of the world of entertainment that Foxtel can provide to you. So as you can see, not only is the Australian pay-TV industry in a very sorry state, Foxtel satellite subscribers are particularly hard done by. Shame Foxtel, shame.

Copyright � September 27th, 1999.
Opinions expressed here are purely those of Adam Smolarczyk.