[OT] Worldcup 2006 ?

[Klaus-Peter Schrage]

dallam schrieb:
> On Sat, Jun 10, 2006 at 12:49:37PM -0500, Alma J Wetzker wrote:
>> If I want to get news, I usually tune in the BBC or some such.  (It is
>> good to have useful radio equipment.)
> 
> The BBC is actually one of the things I won't miss *at all* when I move
> back to the states. In MHO the BBC is worse than Microsoft.
> 
> Not only do I find their presentation of the *News* very slanted and biased,
> I object to having to pay ?115 a year for a TV license for a color tv
> (black and white is about ?80 I believe) to finance the BBC. While other
> television networks here are dependent upon advertisments for their income,
> the BBC has a free ride due to the TV licensing tax. Don't want to pay the
> tax? The BBC employ folks who come to your home and demand entrance to count the
> televisions in your house. A court summons follows and you can be fined ?1000
> (roughly $1800). Oh, as well as the confiscation of your offending television
> sets.

In my country (Germany) we have similar tv and radio licencing 
regulations: You have to pay about 250 $ per year and household. From 
these fees, three tv networks and most of the radio networks are 
financed. There programs are mostly free of advertisements.
Apart from the "public" tv channels, there are several "private" 
networks running solely on advertisements.
I am quite happy with the public networks (of course, others wouldn't 
agree with me). The private programs are mostly rather bad, and when 
it's sometimes claimed that German television is one of the best then 
this is solely due to the public networks.

By the way, the Worldcup 2006 is nearly solely broadcast by the public 
networks (it's 24 h of soccer now on tv ...). They had to pay a huge 
amount for the license, something about 200 Million $.

I personally don't care much about soccer, although I live quite near 
from two of the stadiums, and you can't evade it really now over here.
Klaus