RE: [A/S] FTA......Free to Air

["John P Sargeant" <john.sargeant@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Well Jim , what satellite TV company do you work for?
I am not for stealing anything and am a fully paid up, 100% legal satellite
TV subscriber,  but it seems to me we've allowed the cable and satellite
signal providers to do a number on us and the government has gone along with
the idea. 
Ustawas, when I was a nipper, I could listen to radio stations all over the
US and Canada and it never cost me, other than buying a receiver and paying
a bit for electric to run it. The idea was that a station should be free to
broadcast what it liked to whoever wanted to listen. If you didn't want to
listen, you turned the dial. 
How did the actors, musicians etc get paid? The station sold advertising.
How did they sell advertising? By having really good programming.
Now they want us to pay a fee for letting us watch the advertising and we've
let them do it.
The light at the end of the tunnel however is podcasting. Until the busy
body bureaucrats get their fingers on it (they're having fun, we gotta stop
that!) What was envisioned (freedom to broadcast, publish, film, write etc)
is sadly mutilated. When is the next VAP? 

Security, higher rates or honest subscribers? We're all victims here, and we
did it to ourselves. Dang I hate that.
Sarge