What no cable ?
I was going to use this as my next skywatch image until I noticed the aerial. How often to you come across one of those now? In fact how often to you happen upon analogue TV aerial, a smoking chimney pot and no satellite dish on the roof for your cable of choice? Even here it's not that common a sight and a little odd. How uncluttered the chimney pots look. Of course being the island we have one of those strange quirks of legislation to do with TV viewing. A TV License. I'll explain.
In the UK the BBC is a public funded corporation. The BBC TV and radio programmes are not paid for by sponsored advertising but my the purchasing of a TV license either colour or black and white. You can have several TV'S in a household covered by one license renewable yearly. Now as I have said before the Isle of Man is a separate country with it's own Government, tax, legislation. However, although we are not part of the UK we are part of the British Isles which means we fall under the scheme of paying for a TV license. Did you get that?
Analogue TV is soon to be a thing of the past. Due to poor reception most of us either have cable or a freeview box anyway depending on which side of the mountain you are. In fact some places are still not able to get cable TV. They also tend to be the ones with the open fires too, although certain areas are smokeless fuel free zones. Anyway for those of you young people out there or in warmer climes. those are chimney pots, and that is a TV aerial. Used to be such a common skyline now it's just a little odd and suited to monochrome and harking back to Classic British Cinema.
62 comments:
My parents had an "arial", or antenna as we referred to it, until 1999. You still had to go out and twist the pole around to point it toward the television station when you wanted to change channels. They are indeed odd these days. Great odd/monochrome shot! Would have made a great sky watch, as well.
Very nice! Looks like a storm brewing.
Oh yeah, I remember those... we never actually had an outdoor antenna, but most of our neighbors in the old neighborhood did.
Besides having a marvelous image here (which you always do) this idea of a "TV License" sounds so much like a Monty Python sketch ("I should like to purchase a fish license") I just have to laugh.
But then again, here in the States, we have PBS which is funded mainly by donations -- and some public money -- for now at least. The Bush administration tried to kill federal funding for it, and as you might expect in this economy, donations are flagging. But unfortunately, I doubt enough people would care enough about PBS to buy a TV License unless forced to at point of law. With 5000 channels of crap to choose from, I"m not sure anybody'd notice if PBS died out.
This scene could be used in a WW2 movie! It has an ominous feel to it...and yes, those antennas are rare!
Nice photo!
I enjoyed reading about TV antennas. Everyone living in my village has cable or a dish but lots of farms in the countryside still have antennas. Everyone will ave to switch over soon but antennas are still fairly common here.
The roof line makes for a great monochrome shot. That along with the clouds make for an overall nice effect. Smiles B
Maybe another for skywatch. So English. We still have antennas around the town and the trailer park. Do you have log fires. Retro photo.
We still have plenty of those where I came from hehe. I like the clouds in your photo.
I really like looking at your photographs...I want to learn the art of picture taking, as opposed to just pointing and snapping ha ha. The reason why I wanted to comment on this was not just to commend you on great photos, but because this reminded of Mary Poppins :)
I like the photo and your explanation of it, Babooshka. You're such an observant photographer.
Mary Poppins would suit you B. I really enjoyed last week the photos took my breathe away. I like how you have got this corner to corner. A lot to learn from you. A one to one with you, how about it? Walk round Ramsey. I'd pay.
That is such a classic shot. Very appealing and as you said uncluttered.
so funny! Love the pic. I got rid of my cable 4 months ago - if you can believe it - and went back to aerial as its free and I am tired of paying a lot of money for channels I never watch. So I am doing the ol' 'move the antenna to get the best picture' thing. But its free! I am reverting, while the rest of the world is converting. :)
I loved the roofs in Paris. The chimney pots and those old antennaes like yours. What a grand shot, B.
V
I think this is a great picture, even with the TV aerial. If you were to take a roof line picture in this area you would have mostly satellite dishes.
love the shot!
If you look a some of D'star's shots you will see we have every kind of excrecence. No cable here.
I love roofs and chimneys ,the b&W is perfect !
Bonjour Babooshka,
Here, in Paris, we also get all this kind of stuff on our roof. I often take pictures of antennas, chimney pots with smoke .... Many Parisians do chimney fire still.
I love the making of the roof, the lines of the chimney against this cloudy sky.
TV aerials are still visible here, along with myriads of sattelite dishes. I like this photo, with the clouds, chimneys...
Excellent black and white photograph
Haha. Thats not often, no. We have got a great view from our balkony - but there are cables everywhere.
Great post :)
I love chimneys and pots, they make such great patterns against the sky.
I haven't seen an aerial antenna in years.
Chimney pots and rooftops always put me in mind of Sara Crewe of The Little Princess in her tiny garret.
Coronation Street straight away.
Not to different from what we have around here - Norway is a might long country to cable. Now we have got digital aerial transmissions.
A perfect description...
Only advantage with the BBC is you don't get adverts every 5 mins...
And if you are over 70 it's free...whoopie roll on...lol
I think that's interesting. Here, everything is going digital and this month there is supposed to be no more regular t.v. You HAVE to have a digital box if you want t.v.
As for the photo, I like it. I like the stairstep to the sky effect of the rooftops.
So now I wonder how you heat these homes; natural gas? How odd to have to pay license fees to simply watch TV. Advertising pays for our Network TV. For Public TV, it is paid via public tax and donations from the public and corporate entities.
Still, I find very little worth watching and don't understand this so called reality TV nonsense.
The French state channels have given up publicity since January, following the BBC model.
I took some similar sky and chimney photos recently. They were supposed to be in colour but were as b&w as yours!
Astro cable digital TV is common in Malaysia but not chimney pots.Thanks for sharing..well that Astro TV we have to pay to view.
Have a nice day.
Great repetition shot! Chimneys are allways such good subjects!
First, this photo is just superb. Perfect in B&W, it just stands out. I am in awe of this one. What time of day did you take it?
Second TV license. What fun we have here. We don't have TV. Does the TV corporation believe us? NO. The tone of letters we get is really something quite incredible. They tell us that while they are not accusing us of lying, there are many unscrupulous people out there and those people will be prosecuted. Of course they will have to come and investigate our house to ensure we are not one of them. UK = guilty until proven innocent.
It really strikes as strange, now that you mention it :D
Even though the antennas are normal for me.
We have some real fancy ones here in Hungary ;)
Lovely shot!
Very nice picture!
I remember that there were only black and white TV's (I'm 43). And we had LP's and singles and the first computer at home with a floppy disk, haha. And an aerial.
Oh, and our dogs' coats are so shiny because of the food, I never wash them. Used to compete in
all-labrador-fake-hunting competitions. Could always pick our dogs out of the rest of the black labs because of their shiny coats (and because they were running in the wrong direction
;-o).
That's a nice picture ! In Belgium we had all cable already in end 50th, it came together with electricity and telephone cables. If you used it or not was up to you but the connection was there. That's why we don't have antennas on roofs.
Our licence is added to the property tax bill so there's no escaping it..
So aerials have become a thing of the past...who'd have thought..(we've still got one having held out against satellite)
I do not dislike your picture!
This small aerial doesn´t chock me...I consider it as an antique!
You should take a look a the Portuguese roofs...then you would be shocked!!!
Interesting post. Great shot though. MB
O my there are still thousands of aerials on chimneys round here and they'll still be here when analog changes to digital as most folks have got digiboxes - indeed though there are a lot of dishes around now too.
hello .. i wil be offline for a while .. as you see in my blog are you ok .. some uk friends are covered with snow .. i wait till the wind will blow it here to schleswig holstein .. see you .. click
Great shot and good eye! I'm kinda sorry to see analog go... all tech isn't always what it's cracked up to be.
Its not unusual here. Even though most people have cable or one of those ugly dishes they still keep thier ariels. Not sure why as the signal will be turned off soon.
Btw, great photo :)
Great shot...It does make you think how things change. We still have plenty of aerials around but a lot of new builds now don't always have chimneys at all.
In my area though new homes that have recently been built had to have artificial chimney pots but on them to keep in with this part of my villiage.
Monochrome Sky Watch!
Reminds me of Wiltshire Nat Trust Village... shit - sorry - can't remember the name!
And, yes - Sir Woodsock, the aristocratic bear is my blog too - LOL!
Do you want to be his photographic Aunt???
He'd love that!
Blue
How lovely .. I, too, shot tops of a bldg.
Antennas are used that you still there? Chimney drew my interest. Greetings.
The same is true over here in Ireland. Many house still have the aerials for the National Tv stations RTE. However the aerial in your image looks like the one use by a cable/sat tv company rivals to sky.
It's like the opening of Coronation Street!
Here in Norway we have no analog TV broadcasts longer, but the new
digital terrestrial network are based on common UHF TV aerials. So in Norway we will continue to see these traditional aerials along with satellite dishes.
Great picture selection for monochrom and odd shots.
Yeah, the TV license thingy. It doesn't take living on an island. Ask any Swede about it. Well, on second thought - don't ask...
We are transitioning to digital soon. I like the composition of all the chimney.
This is beautiful monochrome...about other sides I don't know so much.
Nice one. My two sons put up an antenna for me this past summer - it transmits the HD signal and of course is free. And, we for one, would dearly miss PBS. I would say 90% of our viewing is of PBS programming and all worthwhile. (Sorry, Mojo.)
Great photo. Memories indeed.
Your explanation is as confusing as our explanation for the same thing. Your photo of the roofs (rooves) though is lovely! :)
Excellent! I love this roof line!
I haven't seen an antenna in years. Around here EVERYbody has satellite dishes - they are quite an eyesore too!
We had one on an old house we owned but it didn't work. The house has since been sold and I don't know if it's still there. I never thought to photograph it.
I like the mood of the picture.
This is my fist visit - glad I found you.
That's a nice pic and makes your point very well. No I did not get that - I was lost after black and white or color :-} You have a lot of very nice photos - really like the 2/1 "Paths..." pic. You are much more of a purist than I - I would have PhotoShopped that antenna right out of there and used it in Skywatch :-}
I live in the Isle of Man and have never bought a TV licence.
Many people are turning their aerials so they recieve tv from ireland instead (this works especially well if you are located higher up on the island, particularly on the west side.
It was interesting to note that when TV licence inspectors (aka BBC thugs) arrived on the island they were promptly booted off for not being in possession of a Work Permit. They were told that if they wished to return they would need to apply for one BEFORE they came; to date they have not been back.
So balls to 'em. 99% of convictions are through admission. They have no real power outside of that which we all have under common law.
You have an earial on your roof??? So what you may have milk bottles on your doorstep but that doesn't mean there are cows in your garden ;-)
Si
(solicitor)
The cows comment made me laugh.Good quote. We were daft enough to continue paying for a license when we came across. If only we had known.
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