[St Charles Owl]

I am an Albion fan, I will watch games involving us and England not random games except for FA cup where I support the underdog. I hate what English football has become because of Sky, I hate the way they, the FA and the media favour a few clubs. I refuse to pay for sky sports, sky movies and any other add on's that they keep imposing on people ......... british television generally has taken on the appearance of US television, too many channels all showing mass produced heavily repeated trash ......

I would disagree with that last statement, there is a ton of new stuff on tv over here, much more than you ever get on UK tv!!

Comparing sports coverage in the UK and US though is interesting. Nearly all the major sports over here are shown on "regular" TV channels such as NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox, these are the US equivalents of the BBC and ITV and require no premium cable/satelite package to watch them. While it is all to do with money, in the US most of the sports are bought by the mainstream networks as opposed to a premium channel such as Sky. ESPN is the exception to that, and they have 5 or 6 channels dedicated to sport, but even most of these are available on your basic package.

If the BBC want to compete with Sky, then they are going to have to stump up the money to do so, but to do that they need to drastically change the way they are funded. The licence fee will not support sports rights, neither will those paying for it as it would come at the expense of other things. The BBC has a charter to provide public tv and however you look at sport, it is not considered applicable to the whole population. The problem with sky is not their coverage, which is generally excellent, its the fee you have to pay for the privilege of watching it!!