The Best Game You Can Name

As I've mentioned before, the thing I miss the most from back home is hockey. After numerous attempts (in vein) to get the cable company that carries hockey installed http://jakarta-grind.blogspot.com/2010/08/first-media-we-dont-need-it-do-we.html I finally gave up. Then, one day, out of nowhere, a glimmer of hope appeared. A new cable operator called Skynindo that had the channel I was desperately searching for (In HD as well!). I called them up and they informed me that they could indeed have it installed in my home by the end of the week. This filled me with excitement as I was FINALLY going to be able to watch the NHL playoffs in the comfort of my own home. After some back and forth discussion with the sales rep, we agreed that the technician(s) would come on Saturday.

I made it a point to be home on that day and not preoccupied as technicians often show up without hammers or ladders and require assistance. As promised, the technician(s) showed up at 2 P.M. after asking for directions a couple of times. To my surprise, they were ready to go, complete with their own tools. They chose a spot to install the satellite and went to work. I was impressed by the spot they chose since I've had lots of trouble with the location of my other cable satellite.

As they went to work, I informed them that I would be inside if they needed anything. That was at 2:15 P.M. Over the next couple of hours, I looked outside every 20 minutes or so to make sure that they were OK. They seemed to be taking a very long time as previous satellite installations had taken as little as 15 minutes. I decided to leave them be as they seemed to know what they were doing.

They eventually re-appeared at 4:45 P.M. asking if I had a television that they could use. Confused, I asked for clarification. They said that they wanted to take a television up to the roof to test if the satellite was working properly. The only television I have is my 32 inch flat screen and I told them that there was no way that they were taking it up to the roof and that they would just have to run the cable down (as they would eventually have to anyways) to the television. They begrudgingly agreed. I didn't bother asking them how they planned on plugging the television in up on the roof.

After I showed them where the cable had to come into the house, they ran t

he cable and plugged it into the converter box. Step 1

complete, success! The next step was to connect the converter box to the television; easy, right? Not so much. After the 2 of them spent 20 minutes fumbling around, I decided to step in and help. The converter to television connection was a component cable, like the one used to connect a dvd player. When I stepped in to help, they were basically guessing where to plug the wires in. I tried to explain to them (without being patronizing) that the blue wire goes in the blue holes and that the green wire goes in the green holes etc. Each time it wouldn't work, they would disconnect a wire and try it in a different hole. (for example: blue wire in red hole? No! How about blue wire in white hole?) They were convinced that they would eventually get it right. I shooed them out of the way and connected it properly. After it was all colour coded and ready to rock, it still wasn't working. I informed them that it had to be the converter box or the satellite. They didn't listen, they started randomly trying the wires in different slots again.

By this point, I was losing my patience. I asked a friend (there were 5 friends sitting on my couch being entertained this whole debacle, especially since one of my friends pointed out that the one technician looked just like Chris Rock) how to say 'guess' in Bahasa. Again, I explained to the technician that he couldn't just guess where the wire went, that the colours HAD to match and that he could NOT just randomly try different holes. They only work in the hole that has the matching colour. This time, I seemed to get through to him. He replied with "Ooooooh gitu" (oh, like THAT) and went back out to the satellite and managed to get a signal. He got a semi decent signal and, in order to make it better, he decided to switch the blue and green wires. This resulted in a black & white picture with a green-ish tinge. "Udah, Mister!" (done) he cried triumphantly. I had to disappoint him by pointing out that the picture is supposed to be in colour (not to mention HD) and not black & white with a green tinge. Again, I switched the wires back to where they were supposed to be, making him watch and sent them back to the satellite. After a good 30 minutes of playing around, they managed to get a clear picture.

Just as they did, a hockey game appeared on my television which was met by a boisterous applause by the peanut gallery on the couch. That's the end of this ordeal, or so I thought. Not so much, I still had to sort out the bill. They had attempted to charge me for transport and vastly over charged me for the length of cable used (you pay by the meter). Luckily, I had my tape measure sitting on the table and went about measuring the cable. After 2 minutes of this, they gave up and agreed that it was probably 10 meters less than the 25 meters they had written down. It was even less than that but I couldn't be bothered. They were refusing to budge on the transport fee as their office was "Jauh" (far away). After threatening to call the sales manager, they begrudgingly removed the transport fee. Nobody else who had ever installed anything in my house had ever tried to charge me for transport and I'd be dammed if they were going to be the first. Finally, everything was settled. Not so much.

They told me that the balance of the bill (including that satellite that I had to buy) had to be paid in cash to them. These guys were sketchy looking on their best day and there was no way I was handing them a big wad of cash. After 3 or 4 phone calls, I got their boss to agree to let me deposit the money into his account the next day on the condition that I provided them with a photocopy of my passport. I told him that I didn't have a photocopy of my passport on me and that it was not the easiest thing to obtain on 6:30 P.M. on a Saturday night. He said to give my passport to the technicians and have them go find a place. NOT GONNA HAPPEN! Finally, I "remembered" that I did have a photocopy of my passport laying around in my room. I quickly changed the passport number on the contract I had filled out and gave them a photocopy of my old passport that expired in June 2009. They didn't notice and were happily on their way after spending a mere 5 hours at my house.

Tired and sweaty, I went inside and cracked a well deserved beer and watched the good ol' hockey game. Since that day, I have been fortunate enough to watch playoff hockey on a nightly basis and have managed to even get some of my British friends interested in it. Life is good despite the Detroit Red Wings losing a 7th game heartbreaker. As Stopmin Tom Connors says, it is "The best game you can name, that good ol' hockey game" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SXNCnf15EA

GO CANUCKS! Bring the Cup back to Canada!

Pimpin' Ain't Easy

For the last couple of years, there has been some controversy surrounding who has the rights to broadcast English Premier League football in Indonesia. This story is a bit long and complicated but I will try my best to explain it. If anything I say is incorrect, please clarify by leaving a comment. To the best of my knowledge, this is how the story goes...

Football is broadcast on the Singapore based ESPN/Star Sports and also occasionally on local Indonesian television stations. Many years ago when I first moved here, it seemed that virtually every EPL game was televised live on both cable and antenna TV. The beauty of this was that the large majority of Indonesians who couldn't afford the luxury of cable television could watch their favorite teams in their own homes or at the local food stall.

Starting in 2007, football rights were sold to the highest bidding cable company. The first cable company to win was ASTRO TV which is a Malaysian company. What this meant was that you could only watch EPL football if you had an ASTRO subscription. Anybody who had INDOVISION or FIRST MEDIA (called Kablevision back then) found out the hard way that football games were not televised and alternate programming was shown on ESPN and Star Sports during those times. The shows showcasing goals and highlights of the week were also blocked.

With their backs against the wall, many people subscribed to ASTRO just so they could watch football. My roommate at the time was British and insisted that we get ASTRO so I went along. Every weekend, we had the luxury of having live football on TV. At one point close to the end of the season, the Indonesian government stated that ASTRO had committed some kind of violation and had their cable license revoked pending the payment of a fine. Coincidentally, this happened 3 days before arguably the biggest match of the year between Chelsea and Manchester United. Everyone who had ASTRO was shocked to turn on their televisions to find black screens on every channel. A couple of bars around town had foreign satellite channels and were able to broadcast the game live. Apparently, they had lineups to get inside. By the next weekend, everything was back to normal. I assume that ASTRO paid their fine.

The next August, as the new EPL season was about to start, nobody had the rights to broadcast EPL football. If I recall correctly, only pubs with foreign satellite had games televised for the first couple of weeks. After that, an Indonesian minister was gracious enough to start his own cable company called AORA. They now became the new "it" cable subscription as they had landed the big prize. They also landed full coverage of the Beijing Olympic games. Needless to say, I didn't watch a single second of the Olympic games that year. The only thing wrong with AORA was that they only offered a total of 8 channels. This is a far cry from the 50 plus channels that most subscribers offer even for basic cable. What this meant was that if you wanted real cable TV and EPL football, you had to subscribe to 2 cable providers. A few hardcore fans did that, the rest did like I did and caught the odd game at a bar and neglected to watch most games that season.

To the Indonesian branch of ASTRO, this was a kill shot. Once EPL football was no longer available, many people simply stopped paying their bills despite having 1 year contracts. A sign of how desperate they were was that it took nearly 4 months of our household not paying the monthly bills before they shut our cable off for good. Nowadays, you still see the odd ASTRO satellite dish here and there. Mostly, they are forgotten relics of past supremacy.

Fast forward to the beginning of last season. I considered subscribing to AORA when I heard that they had expanded their channel line up. When I looked into it, I found out that they had expanded from 8 to 12 channels and decided not to subscribe.

I was expecting another year of living in relative football oblivion when a surprise email appeared on my screen one Friday night in August. The email stated that INDOVISION (hands down the most popular cable company in Indonesia and the one I subscribed to since no others were available in my area) had won the rights to broadcast EPL football for the upcoming season. It turned out to be a wonderful year of football watching for yours truly as they not only had every game broadcast live but all of the football highlight shows and match replays shown midweek on EPSN/Star Sports. A local television station called TV ONE also had some games televised live. The only downside to this was that Champions League games and highlights were not shown on ESPN/Star Sports version of Indovision. I didn't watch a single Champions League game that season since they are mostly broadcast live at 2 A.M. local time and were not replayed.

Lo and behold, here we are on the verge of the kickoff of yet another season of EPL football. The first game between Manchester City and Tottenham Hotspur is tonight at 6:45 P.M. local time. As of yesterday, the Jakarta Globe reported that a deal had not yet been reached as to who would have the rights to broadcast EPL football on ESPN/Star Sports. Apparently, the price tag has doubled from last season and negotiations are still in progress. There is no better negotiating tool than a ticking clock. TV ONE has stated that they will not show EPL football as they cannot afford it. You can read more here

http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/just-hours-from-kickoff-english-premier-league-fans-still-in-the-dark/391133

By now, you may be asking yourself why I keep unnecessarily adding ESPN/Star Sports to sentences or why I refer to 'Pimpin' in the title of this blog. Well, as I see it, here's the major problem with all of this.....

When one subscribes to a cable company (INDOVISION in my case), one is paying for the right to view certain channels. If a subscriber opts to get a movie package or a sports package, they are paying for the right to watch HBO or Cinemax or ESPN/Star Sports, not to be sold selective programming of those channels. They are NOT paying for the right to watch specific programs only available to specific cable providers (this is called PAY-PER-VIEW everywhere else in the world). What I mean by this is that if you subscribe to HBO, you are paying the cable company for the right to watch their programming, which they in turn have paid HBO for. In this case, people are paying for the right to have unlimited access to any program shown on ESPN/Star Sports, which is NOT based on the cable provider. The programming schedule and content for CNN (for example) is the exact same on any cable provider in Indonesia 24 hours a day 7 days a week.

I know that this is a little confusing as it took me time to wrap my head around all of this. Let me give you an example that may help to clarify what it is they are doing with EPL football:

If you subscribe to HBO, you are paying to view the content of that channel. To make an analogy, this would be similar to if somebody sold the rights to a single cable company to have the exclusive right to broadcast "The Wire" or "The Sorpanos" or "Band of Brothers" which are all HBO shows. So if you had INDOVISION, you would be able to watch these shows on HBO but any other cable provider would have these shows blocked out on HBO.

Or, this would be like if you could only watch "Spongebob Squarepants" on the INDOVISION version of Nickelodeon.

To me, this is like a middle man jumping in to re-sell (or pimp out) a service that you are already paying for in the first place. There are certain channels such as FX and FOX Channel which are only available on INDOVISION or ASN which is only available on FIRST MEDIA. In those cases, you are paying for exclusive access to those stations.

In this case, ESPN/Star Sports (which every cable provider in Indonesia has access to) is paying the EPL for the rights to broadcast their football matches. This means that you should be able to watch this content regardless of what cable provider you have as long as you subscribe to those channels.

I don't know if it is ESPN/Star Sports out of Singapore or some branch of the Indonesian government who is doing the middle manning but I know who I'd put my money on if I had to make a bet.

So as of now, I am keeping my fingers crossed and patiently waiting to see if I will get to watch football from the comfort of my own home later on this evening....