Chapter 125 DigitalUK
“Thank you very much, Your Highness the Duke. It is possible that we will be transferred to the Middle East soon. Your donation will solve problems for many soldiers.”
After the donation ceremony, Graf Eaton, leader of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, thanked Barron.
“This is the only thing I can do, Mr. Commander. Although I don’t think it is the right decision to send the soldiers to the battlefield now, and I am working hard to avoid this happening. But if When it is unavoidable, at least you can do something for them..."
"You are a noble person, Your Highness the Duke."
After receiving the gratitude of the leader of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, Barron asked:
"I didn't know much about this before. I would like to ask, Mr. Leader, after passing After the war, when those soldiers return home, will they be able to return to normal? What about your life?”
“You know, Your Highness, war is always cruel, where soldiers need to endure great pressure, so many soldiers often need psychological counseling later. Being able to return to normal life, of course, is something. People can't even return to normal life. After they retire, they can only join the mercenary corps and continue their military life."
Graf Eaton sighed and said:
" Just like a former comrade of mine, After he was discharged from the army, because he could not integrate into society, he went to Africa to join a mercenary corps and became an instructor. The mercenary corps called 'Imperial Shield' was founded by Mr. Melvin Coy, who once participated in The First Gulf War ”
"Oh? It turned out to be a mercenary army founded by our soldiers. Mr. Leader, I have read some reports and articles about mercenaries, and I am very interested in these. Can you tell me about it?"< br>
Graff Eaton also had a good impression of the young Duke in front of him. He nodded and said:
"It's an honor, His Highness the Duke, actually in China. In East and Africa, or in other words, all places facing chaos, there are many mercenary groups. Of course, there are often conflicts between them because of their interests, and the competition between them is also very fierce..."
After the introduction of the leader, Barron knew that the "Imperial Shield" mercenary group he was more familiar with was because he had friends there.
Speaking of it, "Imperial Shield" has been established for more than three years, but due to lack of funds, it has not developed much. It only takes over some tasks such as security of mines and construction sites, and for Some local armed forces carry out training tasks, but after all, being able to survive tenaciously in such a place is considered quite powerful.
Most of the main members of the "Imperial Shield" are veterans from Britain. There are many such mercenary corps in Africa, and many countries, including Europe and the United States, have similar mercenary corps in Africa and the Middle East.
After hearing that the "Imperial Shield" had been lacking funds, Barron was moved and said to Graf Eaton:
"Mr. Leader, you have Mr. Coy's Contact information? Maybe we will send someone to interview him.”
“If you want, Mr. Duke, I can get his contact information through my friend.”
"Thank you so much."
…
According to the agreement reached between the BBC and SDTV, the two companies jointly funded the establishment of DigitalUK, which is responsible for managing the strategy, policy and service development of British terrestrial digital television.
DigitalUK’s shareholding ratio is SDTV’s 60% shareholding and the BBC’s 40% shareholding. The two companies contribute capital according to their shareholding ratio to promote the terrestrial digital TV platform Freeview.
Mainly starting from November 1st, analog TV users in the UK will be provided with free reservation service for the installation of their set-top boxes. Of course, the prerequisite for free installation of Freeview platform set-top boxes is that they need to sign an agreement with DigitalUK. And pay a certain deposit - when the user no longer uses the Freeview platform, or changes to a digital TV, the set-top box equipment can be returned and the deposit returned.
In addition, DigitalUK will also cooperate with TV equipment manufacturers to build the Freeview platform into the latest digital TVs, so that users who purchase new digital TVs can directly watch the free Freeview platform without a set-top box. program on.
In the initial stage, the BBC and SDTV have invested 50 million pounds in DigitalUK for the manufacturing and promotion of its set-top box equipment and the research and development of related technologies - of which 30 million pounds was paid by SDTV. According to the agreement between the two parties, a total of 50 million pounds of funds will be injected into DigitalUK before July 1 next year for the next phase of promotion of the Freeview platform.
In fact, the BBC can be the first to use the Freeview platform, because starting from November 1st, their channels will be connected to the Freeview platform.
SDTV had to wait until New Year's Day, 2003, to launch its first TV channel.
It is also worth mentioning that in preparation for SDTV, Summit Digital TV Company has already obtained a loan financing of 100 million pounds from Barclays Bank just to purchase related equipment.
Most of Summit Media’s previous profits were invested in it.
It can be said that this time it is really a "last stand". Even Fergal Hayden, CEO of Summit Media, was extremely hesitant when he first heard about Barron's plan.
You know, just to promote the Freeview platform, DigitalUK needs to invest no less than 100 million pounds per year for five consecutive years.
Even the BBC was unable to bear such a large investment, so it voluntarily gave up its controlling stake in DigitalUK.
This total promotion investment of up to 300 million pounds is a huge burden for the "young" Summit Media - Fergal Hayden cannot guarantee that they will always be able to produce films like " Thetraitors" is such a successful phenomenal variety show.
And next year, "Thetraitors" will be broadcast on the Freeview platform, and the number of viewers will definitely be greatly reduced.
The most optimistic estimate is that after five years of promotion plan, by 2008, the number of viewers on the Freeview platform will exceed 10 million - even now, the most powerful BSkyB charges The number of users has not exceeded 10 million. As of now, BSkyBDigital has just over 5 million paid users, which is only half of this number.
So even though it was originally proposed to reach the goal of reaching 10 million Freeview platform users within 5 years, people within DigitalUK believed that this was a bit too optimistic.
As for other media reports, they mercilessly evaluated Freeview as "the ugly duckling that will never grow up to be a swan"...
No matter what others say, Barron still believes in this He is very confident because he knows that in the original time and space, the set-top boxes of the Freeview platform were not even installed for free like now, but were sold.
Just like that, after three years, they both reached 7 million users!
This situation is beyond everyone’s expectations, making the Freeview platform a strong competitor of BSkyBDigital.
Now, they are spending huge sums of money to install it for free. I am afraid it will not be difficult to reach 10 million users within three years.
But at this time, due to the continuous failures of ONDigital and ITVDigital, BSkyBDigital has become a stumbling block in the development of terrestrial digital TV. Everyone lacks confidence in DigitalUK, so it has very conservatively proposed 10 million users in five years. The plan...
Hey, this made everyone so fussy, and he really didn’t know what to say.
(End of this chapter)