Saturday, November 26, 2005

BusTV: Why in English?

Why do I write in English about Portuguese BusTV - clearly a local matter? Because it is not local.

BusTV is a global menace that is already spreading. Corporate drones do not miss any niches. There is BusTV in Portugal now, but there are also plans to take it to Spain. There is BusTV in some London buses now, I've seen it myself. And there is a veritable plague of BusTV in Hong-Kong. A group of citizens has protested this abomination over there (see the "Hush the Bus" campaign site). I found their site accidentaly while googling for information on Portuguese BusTV, and found their predicament, and their views on it, quite similar to mine. This BusTV absurdity probably exists in many other places, but I am not aware of it (info is appreciated, especially if it has actually been stopped somewhere).

This is something that must be stopped now, and stopped everywhere. Even if we lose the fight in Portugal it can be won elsewhere - and I am hoping that some country in Europe will have the strength to bring this up at the EC level and legally ban this thing from the whole EU, as the attack that it is upon the rights of citizens.

3 comments:

António Araújo said...

There seems to be another site on the hong kong situation here and also a blog and wikipedia article (linked from it).

Anonymous said...

i´m the BusTv Portuguese CEO.My English is not good, but my idea for this new media is enough good to help protuguese consumers in their travels.
We must have more protugueses traveling by bus and not by cars.We are helping our country to be more ecologist.Sorry.

António Araújo said...

Well, those are nice intentions except I don't see how that could possibly make sense. The travellers don't enjoy Bus TV. Generally speaking, they hate it. It is not with BusTV that you will attract more people to the Bus. I used to travel on the Bus and lately I started to use my car instead just to avoid the BusTV. I stopped buying the monthly pass just because of that. How is that for an incentive for using the bus?

I am sorry, but BusTV does exactly the opposite of what you say. It makes no sense except to put money in the pocket of your company by making other people's life worse.