I received my official letter today.

[adamwiz2]

Hey Guys,

I am fairly new to skyangel and I understand where most of you are coming from. If I paid to have a lifetime membership to somewhere I would want the lifetime membership to last...well... a lifetime, but at the same time have any of you thought about how much it actually cost you a month for the membership. Even if you got the "Lifetime" membership in 2006, it would be less than $20/mo for your service. Right now with IPTV, I am getting 70 stations $25/mo. Also I got the free reciever so I think that was a good deal, although I already have broadband internet, so that was the only new cost to me. And Lets say you got a "lifetime" membership to skyangel in 2000, you paid less than $6/mo for the service. Skyangel was charging my church over $17/mo (yes a church) for the maybe 25 stations it offered before. Also one other thing I have thought about is, at least SkyAngel did not give up. The Great Comission says to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. With IPTV you can do that. Anywhere where there is a (High-Speed) internet connection you can take your reciever and watch SkyAngel. Sure you have pey for extra recievers and you have to have one for each TV if you want to watch more than one station at a time, but you also had to do the same with satellite. Also, the IPTV Reciever is extremely portable. All you need is a VCR or AV hookups on your TV and it is setup in a snap. It is even Wireless. I realize that for the handful of you that use 56k modem internet, the new IPTV is not really a good thing, especially when you have to pay the monthly fee along with the internet fee, but $5.25 a week should be very doable for the person with a High-Speed Connection.

I guess what my point is, is if you don't want SkyAngel to end up like SkyAngel Canada, then why not upgrade. Sure it is a few more dollars out of your pocket, but if you work 40 Hrs. a week can't you give SkyAngel the money for 1 hour a week.

I do understand where the lifetime members are coming from, but all good things come to an end. No one really foresaw this coming. It is not like the people at Skyangel threw a meteor at the satellite and said, "There now they will hve to pay more for the TV service or we will go under."

All In all. I am just saying, think about what you are doing and ask the question, "Is this needed?" or "What is God's will in all of this?"

[Scroll]

Also one other thing I have thought about is, at least SkyAngel did not give up. The Great Comission says to preach the gospel to the ends of the earth. With IPTV you can do that.

Well no, not exactly. It is not an open platform. You have to get THEIR box plus pay them a monthly fee to get that message of salvation.

One of my biggest points of contention is simply that! The only way a non-Christian has access to that message is by either visiting a subscribing Christian family or church, unless you can buy that many non-Christians will buy the service for the family oriented programming and then suddenly decide to pay an extra $10 a month to get the Gospel. Not too likely a prospect as far as I can reasonable see, especially since I doubt there will be much advertising done for the service outside of Christian community circles.

About the ONLY way I see this being a true evangelistic tool is to market this as a Family Friendly content provider and toss in the Christian channels for free. Dominion won't do that, or at least anytime soon to be sure, because it feels that would not provide a good enough revenue stream because it considers itself a Christian content provider more than an actual evangelistic outreach.

So it all goes back to what were they thinking, what are their actual plans for the future, and what is truly in their hearts.

I might also point out that it may yet be quite some time before outer Mongolia gets broadband.

[catkoko]

First of all many of us paid for our, soon to be useless equipment!

2nd of all not all are privileged to be able to work a 40 hour week In fact many who were taken advantage of by sky angel are the widows, the elderly, and the disabled!

"I guess what my point is, is if you don't want SkyAngel to end up like SkyAngel Canada, then why not upgrade. Sure it is a few more dollars out of your pocket, but if you work 40 Hrs. a week can't you give SkyAngel the money for 1 hour a week. "

Well buying equipment, paying activation fees sure helped the Canadians now didn't it.............

"I guess what my point is, is if you don't want SkyAngel to end up like SkyAngel Canada, then why not upgrade. Sure it is a few more dollars out of your pocket, but if you work 40 Hrs. a week can't you give SkyAngel the money for 1 hour a week. "

Its nice that you make $25 an hour. What about those who make minimum wage? You are talking a days wages, after taxes. About 2-3 more DAYS pay for high speed internet, IF its available!

Once again, the gospel is available to those who can PAY for it.............

[Scroll]

I know of this city in Northwest, Indiana where the trash bill was going up $5 a month and the citizens went up in arms until a deal was worked out to exempt seniors and I think the disabled from the increase. Or something like that.

But then the property taxes went up because the school board wanted more money in part due to an increase in debt servicing which went up by 24% just over last year thanks to replacing buildings. So now there is a plan to replace the high school and one blind supporter of the project said "It only comes to $25 a month per taxpayer! You need to sacrifice for the kids' sake!!"

Concerns about the fiscal responsibility of the board, the plans itself, and overpaying on past such plans aside (and some serious problems with some of those new buildings) make many skeptical of the new plan. But since grannies couldn't afford a $5 a month increase how is a $25 a month increase for what IMO is school board mismanagement suddenly affordable?

Like that school board, I guess Dominion feels justified in it's chosen course but the parallels are very interesting and will have essentially the same effect on the less well to do. Except that to be able to pay that $25 for the full IPTV package (or even $15 for the Faith Pak) someone has to pay about another $50 a month for the broadband, give or take shipping & installation costs.

But as I've stated here many times, clearly this service is NOT for the education of non-Christians since the odds of them going to the trouble of subscribing are overwhelmingly unlikely.


I really wanted to find a compelling reason to overlook all of Dominion's past misleadings and non-disclosures. I could find none.

I even evaluated it based on programming comparisons and again found no compelling reason to subscribe.

To me, it is the Jim Bakker scandal all over again.