This is the music that you hear as you watch the credits

[austin_dern]

I finally got around to paying my TV license. Every few months some American on rec.arts.tv discovers British subjects have to buy one and launches an angry thread about this outrage, but I've never seen Singapore's mentioned. I can't work up any feelings about the charge, about US 6.00 per month, which subsidizes the to-air TV and radio channels. It also supports cable-TV reception of the over-the-air stations to everyone in public housing (about five-sixths of the population; they're quite fine homes).

I expected to pay at an automated bill payment station; these are phone booth-like structures all over the place for electronically paying many company and government bills and fines. Since the license mentions online payment, and has a bar code, and at the stations one menu option is government TV bills, I assumed the station would take payment. This is completely wrong. Evidence of automated payment appears to be a fanciful hoax played by the Media Development Authority. You just have to keep trying to enter the bill by barcode-scan or manually until you give up and go to the Post Office, as I did, where I paid electronically.

Peculiarly the annual licenses are due in January, not on the anniversary of the first license. Instead your first (and last) year the fee is prorated to the length of year you have the license. On my first, from the amount, they didn't prorate to the month as I'd expected, or to the day as I thought possible, but to the quarter-hour of when I entered the post office and got the form.

Trivia: Prior to the Challenger accident, the greatest known erosion of O-ring material occurred on STS 51-B (also Challenger), launched at about 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Source: The Challenger Launch Decision, Diane Vaughan.

Currently Reading: The Futurological Congress, Stanislaw Lem. I'd forgotten the entertaining neologisms, and robots making stuff up to avoid work, which explains much modern software (no offense meant to my friends who are programs).

Comments

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

None taken. It's all good, pro'.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Aw, y'know, you've got the nicest subroutines.

[tracerj.livejournal.com]

*blush* Flatterer.

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

$6/mo? Not bad.. the BBC's certainly not cheap, with the license fee running at something in the region of £10/mo, but, that does support the terrestrial BBC 1 & 2, all the digital terrestrial/cable/satellite channels (News 24, Parliament, BBC 3 & 4, CBBC, and more), Radio 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, plus all the regional radio and TV departments. I'd say it's a pretty good deal, especially considering (a) absolutely no advertising, (b) no need for the periodic passing of the tin cup, as practiced by PBS affiliates. Of course, this independence often puts them into conflict with the government of the day; this I fully support. ^_^

Of course, the most important justification for their continued funding is the return of the Doctor. At last. ^_^

.. and now for episodes 3 and 4 of "Revenge of the Cybermen", from the Tom Baker era.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

There aren't that many Singapore channels for the US $6/month, and they're further divided by needing to split focus between the four primary languages. As it is there are two and a half English-language stations (Central, closer to PBS than anything else here, divides its time, but is mostly English with Mandarin subtitles), and a fairly number of radio stations I never listen to.

There's not so much original programming, though I've talked a bit about the sitcoms produced locally. There are also quite a few depressing dramas. The only science fiction I recall them making is a half-hour drama called Chemistry, about a man and a woman -- not dating, not enemies, just faint acquaintances -- who swap bodies. It sounds like a fun premise, but honestly, it was depressing. Both did a lousy job trying to fit into the others' life, or to slide somehow back into their own.

I don't know if they'll ever show Doctor Who: The Next Generation here, although it'd fit pretty smoothly into Central, I think, and maybe even Channel 5.

[c-eagle.livejournal.com]

You're a broadcaster! :D

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Nope, I'm just a receiver. I've got a ham radio license from the US, but there doesn't seem to be a reciprocity treaty (or any local ham radio activity) here.