All satellite and cable providers are giving free access to HBO US today for the Obama inauguration concert. HBO Canada is showing it also - not free on Starchoice. Oh well I guess I will DVR it for my mom. Bonehead is looking old (and coloring his hair) in HD from U2 - the Edge still looks the same. Sound is great though.

Steve

ThE OBAMA Celebration was Great Especialy in HD it was awsome to see 500,000 were in attendance reported over 5.6 billion people to watch on tv. Cenus shows the biggest celebration in History " We Are One " IN-AUGRUAL celebration

I agree that it was a real event to watch. There would have probaly been even more people watching if the football NFC Championship game wasen't on. lol

5.6 billion? Please tell me that's some kind of typo.

That does sound like an optimistic estimate of total viewers. I am pretty sure that somewhat less than 5.6 billion people have access to HBO, free or not. Was it on other networks in other countries? I would be quite surprised if HBO had more than 1 billion subscribers in Asia, for example.

Not sure why you would expect HBO to be free - they have to make money!

The inauguration will be shown on many channels so you won't miss it.

Not sure why you would expect HBO to be free - they have to make money!

The inauguration will be shown on many channels so you won't miss it.
I'm pretty sure he was talking about yesterday's event. I agree Astral Media could have had a free view for one day.

I understand it was for one program but the whole point of a premium priced service is to make money by offering programming not available elsewhere so how would HBO Canada giving it away make any sense? HBO Canada had to pay for that programming.

So, what I don't understand is, what exactly did it mean when this broadcast was supposed to be available for free? Free to HBO subscribers? If that's the case, then that isn't "free" then, is it?

It was free for people in the US who did not subscribe to HBO. It was a one day free view.

It also was reported that HBO paid two million dollars for the tv rights much to the chagrin of Fox/News who were limited in their reporting of the event. Not CNN who is part of the Time/Warner empire.

it was only for about 7 hours not the whole day. The live broadcast in the afternoon until after the repeat which ended at 9pm. My original point was - if HBO US can pay for the rights and broadcast it free to promote themselves, why could'nt the CDN version?

Steve

HBO & Showtime offer freeviews several times a year in the US. There has never been a freeview of TMN/MC that I remember (other than the one 2 1/2 years ago, but that was actually a special feed they used, not the real thing). Point being, we never get freeviews.

We only get free previews with movie channels that aren't very good like Superchannel!

5.6 billion... Nice accurate info ;)

5.6 billion is probably the number of people living in countries that have TV transmitters and sets. Since they will all show some footage, it is theoretically possible that everybody could see something of it.
Theoretically it is also possible that not a single person in the world actually watches.
The sweetness of the "available to" audience numbers. :)