Digital TV gets Royle approval
Monday, October 8th, 2007Tommo does his part for the switchover
Virgin Media have hired Royle Family star Ricky Tomlinson as the face of their campaign to encourage the switchover to digital TV.
The actor famous for playing couch potato lard arse Jim Royle was hired according to him because ‘they wanted someone who was known for sitting in front of the telly scratching his ****.’
In the promotional video which will soon be doing the rounds on our screens, Ricky puts on a teacher’s mortar board and gown and “…rather than preaching at people, we’ve done it in a comic way with a little bit of a giggle.”
The digital switchover starts this week in Whitehaven, Cumbria and will proceed through every region in Britain, starting next year with the Border region and ending in 2012 with the London, Meridian and Tyne Tees regions being the last to turn off the old signal.
Ricky says that advert is aimed at “the old age pensioner who doesn’t want to spend hundreds and hundreds of pounds, and who is happy with what they’ve got, can just go buy a Sky box that sits on top of the telly, plugs in and they get all the benefits of everything else and all the channels. I don’t think the cost is going to be a deterrent.”
All well and good, but Virgin bosses might not be too happy about that comment about Sky, although in one of the seasonal specials of the BBC sitcom, Jim Royle famously got excited when he received a Sky+ subscription for Christmas.
Switchover begins in Whitehaven next Wednesday. Residents have just over a week to get connected.
November 1st, 2007 at 10:52 pm
So effectively, and this in every report that I have read from Digital-TV so far. that you seem to working ‘hand-in-glove’ with Sky to get everyone to pay over the odds for their service in preference to everyone elses?
November 7th, 2007 at 3:08 pm
Um, no, because there are posts about Virgin Media, BT Vision, Freeview as well as Sky…
November 7th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
It is difficult not to mention Sky as they “own” the whole sector. Maybe if Virgin Media were just not restricted to Cable enabled areas Sky would have some very fierce competition.
… and to be honest there are other posts about other digital providers!