Idea: use DoD for foreign news broadcasts

[jazzyjez]

Since I've been on this forum there have been many requests for DirecTV to carry UK channels, but obviously this is considered a minority interest -- even though I think it could be quite a revenue generator for them as many Americans would probably enjoy the channels as well as the Brits -- hey, it's more choice rather than many of the channels we do have that just re-heat old stuff from the main networks.

Well anyway, since that's unlikely to happen anytime soon, how about at least offering a "daily download" of some of the key news broadcasts from the BBC, ITN and Sky; maybe even some of the news magazine programs like Newsnight. Yes, I know you can get some of this online, but that's a pain to use, and in this case the DoD interface would be a significant improvement. The SD'ish quality level would be acceptable here too (I'll argue for higher quality after we've got it!). Note that BBC-America/BBC-World news programs, although good, are very different to those transmitted on the domestic UK channels, and so don't satisfy this requirement.

The time difference could actually be considered an asset here… say you wanted to watch the evening 10 o'clock news, well even on the East Coast you'd have plenty of time for the download to occur and still be able to watch it the same day.

[Stuart Sweet]

Great idea if you could get the permissions involved. It might be good for all sorts of foreign programs.

[Canis Lupus]

There's currently a foreign movie DoD. I wonder if they would consider expanding programming to include this?

[Scott J]

Didn't DirecTV used to have a world news type channel? I would be interested in a european/world news offering.

[jazzyjez]

Great idea if you could get the permissions involved. It might be good for all sorts of foreign programs.

Agree, and I wish that would happen too, but unfortunately I think permissions are the death knell for many ideas such as this. One reason for focusing on news is that there are fewer issues in this respect.

There's currently a foreign movie DoD. I wonder if they would consider expanding programming to include this?

Perhaps they would... it needs someone with some imagination to make this work though. One reason I specifically referred to UK based news is that at least it's in English which would give it a more general appeal. Of course, that could easily be extended to programming from Aust./NZ/Ireland/SA/etc./etc. I'm sure that because of its relatively low costs it could work quite effectively. Since this channel shows movies in other languages, it would be interesting to know how successful that's been (I guess too early to tell); if it has been good then why not also have news in French, German, Japanese...

Didn't DirecTV used to have a world news type channel? I would be interested in a european/world news offering.

I think you mean NWI - which was an excellent channel in that it showed Sky News from the UK, as well as its native Canadian news broadcasts. I was sad to see that go. We also used to have CNN International - quite different to CNN or CNN-HN. We still have Link TV (DirecTV ch. 375) which shows the DW "Journal" - a very good news/mini-documentary program from a German channel, but in English.

What I'm really after though is the "local" news from the UK, etc. rather than just their version of the world news - I think that's already fairly well covered, e.g. with BBCA, CNN (though CNN-Int is still missed), and to some degree the main networks.