Virgin 1 goes 24 hours on Freeview

Well, we’ve seen a number of changes to the Freeview platform over the past few weeks.  I’ll provide an up to date EPG list on my Ident City blog shortly, but here on Viewpoint, I’ll catch you up on the recent changes that have taken place.

You know about Quest’s “non-arrival” on channel 47.  I posted on that earlier this week.  Suffice to say that at this time, the slide is still airing, and we still do not know when the channel will properly launch.

ITV4 is now on channel 24, broadcasting 24 hours a day.

Dave ja vu (I hate that name!) is now on channel 25.

Home (the new name for UKTV Style) is now on channel 26.  Frankly, these channel names that UKTV have come up with are really bad, and they do nothing in that sense to identify the channel.

ITV2+1 is now on Channel 27.

E4 and it’s timeshift station, E4+1 are on 28 and 29 respectively.

Fiver is on 30 with sister station Five USA on 31.

Smile TV is on channel 32 broadcasting between 3am and 7am. (why?  Seems pointless to me!)

Smile TV 2 has re-appeared on channel 33, broadcasting Babestation programmes between Midnight and 5am.

Setanta Sports 1 hasn’t moved,l they’re still on channel 34.

And new today is Virgin 1+1, which broadcasts between 6pm and 6am, using the old Virgin 1 multiplex space.

Go over to Ident City, and you will find a complete EPG list for Freeview. 

Ratings Review: BARB 5th June 2007

I haven't been following the ratings too much recently, but I do notice in the latest publicly available figures on the BARB website, some very interesting stats.

It is noticeable that Sky One has lost a lot of ground and is now pulling in it's lowest viewing figures ever. Just a 1.1 share / 15.7 weekly reach. It is even more noticeable, that whilst Sky Three has a lower share than Sky One (0.7), the weekly reach figures are better (17.9). Obviously the Sky vs Virgin Media incident is doing Sky One a great deal of damage.

In terms of share of viewing this week, Sky One is now behind the likes of BBC Three (1.2), CBeebies (1.2), E4 (1.2), ITV3 (1.4), ITV2 (1.8) and Sky Sports 1 (2.4). Sky One has never fallen this low and it remains to be seen just what will be done, particularly in regards to Sky Three's prescence on Freeview and the Sky / Virgin Media situation.

Now, for the worst performers of the week. These channels rate so low on share that it's between 0 and 0.1, so we rank them by weekly reach instead. The worst of the worst is Setanta Sports 2, which only broadcasts on Saturdays and Sundays, in a similar way to Sky Sports 2's early years. They rank just 29,000 viewers this week. Then comes MUTV (48,000), The Business Channel (50,000), Legal TV (90,000) and Rockworld TV (92,000).

Setanta may be making a big deal out of the fact that they have Premiership Football from August, but their current ratings are incredibly low. In fact, Setanta Sports 1, which now broadcasts on both Sky and Digital Terrestrial (note: Digital Terrestrial, not Freeview, as you have to pay a subscription), only gets 205,000 viewers per week, and doesn't score high enough on the share of viewing table to get a 0.1, but does at least avoid a complete 0. Out of all the Sports channels that we can track on the BARB ratings, only the Golf Channel UK comes in with a worse performance than Setanta Sports 1 (159,000) and the next worst above Setanta Sports 1 is the now defunkt Prem Plus, which scored 252,000 for one of the last matches they ever showed. Setanta Sports have their work cut out.

DigitalTV.com

The biggest revolution in broadcasting history since the birth of commercial television began in the UK in 1997 with the launch of digital television.

More channels and more choice were promised to the viewer. Today, in 2001, we see that digital has brought us more channels to choose from, but they are not all successful.

The Money Channel has had some well-reported financial problems. Simply Money was simply losing money and relaunched itself as a shopping channel.

Some of the Asian-language services have gone from subscription to free to air and back again in order to tempt subscribers to their services.

Add to that the reports that some programmes on the major digital channels such as BBC Choice, E4 and ITV2 have had no viewers at all, and you can see that the digital channel revolution has suffered similar problems to the dot com revolution.

But why? Simply, there are so many channels and services out there fighting for your attention and viewing time but not enough hours in the week, never mind a day, to view them all.

Plus, the services are as diverse as they come with channels all about fashion, computer games, health, dance music and extreme sports, mixed in with the more traditional multi-channel fare of entertainment, news, movies, sports, pop music and classic television programmes.

With so many new channels coming on stream almost on a weekly basis, it is quite easy to forget that before the digital era, several analogue satellite and cable channels also found the going somewhat tough.

Country Music Television, The Weather Channel and The Family Channel, amongst others, all had difficulty getting their services accepted by enough viewers to make running a channel worthwhile. Even Sky with their deep pockets had troubles with The Comedy Channel, Sky 2 and Sky Sports Gold in the pre-digital era.

But these and other quite high profile difficulties haven't put off the television companies who have launched new channel after new channel or brought existing channels to Sky Digital.

Okay, you say, so satellite and digital channels have had some problems, but what's that got to do with dotcoms? Well, the parallels between the dotcom revolution of the late 1990s and the multi-channel revolution that began in 1997 are quite astounding.

The dotcom revolution saw a massive increase in the number of online shopping websites, a rise that was not supported by an equivalent rise in the number of online consumers.

In the same way, the expansion in the number of channels available to the viewing audience has not been reciprocated by a similar increase in the number of households able to view these digital channels.

Therefore, there will be a point when the number of channels will be so large that the viewing audience and the advertising market will be unable to support them all.

To a small extent we have seen that already, but with the continued expansion of channels, it will not be long before this particular bubble does what the dotcom bubble did and bursts, leading to a number of quite high profile channel failures right across the spectrum of digital channels

We all know that 2000 was the year when the dotcoms began meeting with their logical conclusion, leaving a lot of casualties in their wake. 2001 has seen the first few failures of the digital TV revolution.

Could the next year see the bursting of this bubble? The only people who can decide that are the ordinary people in the street.

Will you watch the programmes on these new channels, and buy the products advertised on them or will you just stick with the channels and programmes you know and love?

Now, for the first time since September 1955, the future of television is back in the hands of the viewers and advertisers.