Staying connected

I’m watching the superbowl. I haven’t watched an NFL game all year which isn’t surprising because I don’t usually watch their game when I’m in Vancouver as I prefer the Canadian version and their season coincides with the game of the gods, hockey. I don’t know how I would have got the games here in Wales had I wanted to watch them but I’ve been able to get hockey so it’s likely I could’ve found football. By subscribing to Settanta sports which has a package of eight sports channels (uh,huh. Eight. Two just for horse racing)I was able to get NASN (north american sports network) which carries NHL, college basketball and NASCAR. Haven’t watched NASCAR yet; there’s always some paint drying somewhere that carries more interest. Most sports fans here subscribe to Sky sports because they carry the big soccer and rugby games. I go to the pub for that.

The game is being broadcast by the BBC because, as their British announcer put it, it’s the biggest sports ‘spectacle’ in the world. And besides, it didn’t start until 11:30pm so it doesn’t clash with any other sports programming. They offer a beginners guide to American football on a sub-channel for all the baffled Brits to bring themselves up to speed on the rules and have found some lesser known ex-players with announcer aspirations to provide colour. What’s most interesting is that because the BBC doesn’t have commercials, I’m missing out on some of the most lavish ads ever produced. The superbowl has the highest pull of any program ever and so commands top dollar from advertisers who in turn produce their best ads for this event.

And the reason there’s no ads is BBC is funded entirely by a tax collected by the government called the TV licensing fee. Yep. You have to have a license to watch TV. And they have vans with electronic TV detection equipment that roam about looking for evaders with enormous fines for those trying to watch TV without a license. ALL the houses here have an antenna on the roof, I hadn’t seen them in millennia, because once you get your license you can actually pick up half a dozen channels for free. But if you want the full pull - sports, movies, Coronation Street - you either get a cable or a satellite dish and then it starts to get expensive.

Telecommunication here is very expensive. Telephone, internet, television and cell phones are offered by a dozen or more different companies but that hasn’t kept the prices down. You pay by the minute for every phone call, even on your landline and cell phone rates are comparable to what I was paying back in the '80's, about 30 cents a minute with the landline being about half that. The tv channels are grouped such that you need to get several packages to get something for everybody in the family and are euphemistically named medium, large and extra large; remind anyone of Starbucks? Movies are available on demand but we get ours in the mail for greater selection at a greater price. The phone company wanted $225 to hook the house up to a landline so we’ve opted to get our landline via cable from Virgin who sold me a package for telephone (medium, based on price per minute), television (large, based on number of channels) and internet (large, based on speed). The cable was already in place so all we had to do was agree to a one year contract and give them access to our bank account. We had to go to a different company for our cell phones because apparently we do't have sufficient credit history here to qualify for one from Virgin. I know, getting set up here was a frustrating, time-consuming business but we've now got internet and the superbowl. Which, by the way, is still on so I’m signing off with a promise to write up all the things I like about being here. I’m in danger of becoming another “whinging Welshman” (the English view of the Welsh) and there’s actually lots to love about life this side of the pond.