"Thank you very much, Your Highness. We may be transferred to the Middle East soon. Your donation will solve the problems of many soldiers."
After the donation ceremony, Graf Eaton, master of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, thanked Barron.
"This is all I can do, Mr. Commander. Although I don't think it is the right decision to send soldiers to the battlefield now, and I am trying to avoid this situation. But if it is really unavoidable, at least I can do something for them..."
"You are a noble man, Your Highness."
After receiving the gratitude from the commander of the Worcestershire and Sherwood Foresters, Barron asked,
"I didn't know much about this before. I want to ask, Commander, after the war, can those soldiers return home and return to their normal lives?"
"You know, Your Highness, war is always cruel. Soldiers need to bear great pressure there, so many soldiers often need psychological counseling before they can return to normal life. Of course, some people can't even return to normal life. After they are discharged from the army, they can only join those mercenary groups and continue their military life."
Graf Eaton sighed and said:
"Like one of my former comrades. After he was discharged from the army, he was unable to integrate into society, so he went to Africa to join a mercenary group and became an instructor. The mercenary group, called 'Imperial Shield', was founded by Mr. Melvin Coy, who had participated in the first Gulf War."
"Oh? So it's a mercenary corps founded by our soldiers. Mr. Captain, I've read some reports and articles about mercenaries before and I'm very interested in them. Can you tell me about them?"
Graf Eaton also had a favorable impression of the young Duke in front of him. He nodded and said,
"It's an honor, Your Highness. In fact, there are many mercenary groups in the Middle East and Africa, or in other words, in all places facing chaos. Of course, there are often conflicts of interest between them, and the competition between them is also very fierce..."
After the introduction by the captain, Baron learned that the mercenary group he was more familiar with was the "Imperial Shield" because he had friends there.
Speaking of which, "Shield of the Empire" has been established for more than three years, but due to lack of funds, it has not developed much. It only takes on some tasks such as security in mines and construction sites, and training for some local armed forces. But after all, being able to survive tenaciously in such a place is already quite powerful.
The main members of "Imperial Shield" are mostly veterans from Britain. There are many such mercenary corps in Africa. Many countries, including Europe and the United States, have similar mercenary corps in Africa and the Middle East.
After hearing that the Empire Shield had been short of funds, Barron had an idea and said to Graf Eaton:
"Mr. Captain, do you have the contact information for Mr. Koi? Perhaps we can send someone to interview him."
"If you want, Mr. Duke, I can get his contact information through my friend."
"Thank you very much."
…
According to the agreement reached between the BBC and SDTV, the two companies jointly invested to establish Digital UK, which is responsible for managing the UK's terrestrial digital television strategy, policy and service development.
Digital UK holds 60% of the shares of SDTV and 40% of the shares of BBC. The two companies invest according to their shareholding ratio to promote the terrestrial digital television platform Freeview.
Mainly starting from November 1st, a free appointment service for installing their set-top boxes will be provided to analog TV users across the UK. Of course, the prerequisite for obtaining free installation of the Freeview platform set-top box is to sign an agreement with Digital UK and pay a certain deposit. When users no longer use the Freeview platform or switch to digital TV, they can return the set-top box equipment and return the deposit.
In addition, Digital UK will also work with TV equipment manufacturers to integrate the Freeview platform into the latest digital TVs, so that users who purchase new digital TVs can watch programs on the free Freeview platform directly without a set-top box.
In the initial stage, the BBC and SDTV have invested 50 million pounds in Digital UK for the manufacture and promotion of its set-top box equipment and the research and development of related technologies - of which 30 million pounds was paid by SDTV.
According to the agreement between the two parties, a total of 50 million pounds will need to be injected into Digital UK before July 1 next year for the next stage of promotion of the Freeview platform.
In fact, the BBC can be the first to use the Freeview platform, because starting from November 1, their channels will be connected to the Freeview platform.
SDTV had to wait until New Year's Day 2003 to launch its first television channel.
It is also worth mentioning that, as a preparation for SDTV, Summit Digital Television has already obtained a loan of 100 million pounds from Barclays Bank just to purchase related equipment.
Most of Summit Media's previous profit income was also invested in it.
It can be said that this is really a "fight to the death". Even Fergal Hayden, CEO of Summit Media, was extremely hesitant when he first heard Barron's plan.
You know, just to promote the Freeview platform, Digital UK needs to invest no less than 100 million pounds every year for five consecutive years.
Even the BBC found such a huge investment too much to bear, so it voluntarily gave up its controlling stake in Digital UK.
This total promotional investment of up to 300 million pounds is a huge burden for the "young" Summit Media - Fergal Hayden can't even guarantee that they can always produce such a successful phenomenon-level variety show as "The Traitors".
Moreover, next year, "The Traitors" will be broadcast on the Freeview platform, and the number of viewers will definitely be greatly reduced.
You should know that according to the most optimistic estimate, after the five-year promotion plan is completed, by 2008, the number of viewers of the Freeview platform will exceed 10 million - even now, the most powerful BSkyB has less than 10 million paying users. As of now, the number of paying users of BSkyB Digital has just exceeded 5 million, which is only half of this number.
So even though the goal of increasing the number of Freeview platform users to 10 million within five years was initially proposed, people within Digital UK thought this was a bit too optimistic.
As for other media reports, Freeview was mercilessly described as "an ugly duckling that will never grow into a swan"...
No matter what others say, Baron is still very confident about this, because he knows that in the original time and space, the set-top boxes of the Freeview platform were not even installed for free like they are now, but were sold.
Just like that, three years later, they reached 7 million users!
This situation, which was beyond everyone's expectations, made the Freeview platform a strong competitor to BSkyB Digital.
Now, they are spending huge amounts of money on free installation, so it won't be difficult for them to reach 10 million users within three years.
However, at this time, due to the continuous failure of ON Digital and ITV Digital, BSkyB Digital has become a stumbling block to the development of terrestrial digital television. Everyone lacks confidence in Digital UK, so he has very conservatively proposed a plan of 10 million users in five years...
Oh, everyone is making such a fuss about this, I really don't know what to say.