Broadband TV Streaming Platform Freely Gets 11 New UK TV Channels from 5
Broadband-based live TV streaming service Freely, which is backed by the major UK broadcasters and is an evolution – not yet a replacement – for the existing Freeview platform (inc. Freeview Play and Freesat), last week added eleven new TV channels to its service that have been supplied by 5 (Channel 5).
The eleven new channels and their corresponding channel numbers are 5Cops (Channel 69), 5Police Interceptors (C70), 5Movies (C77), 5A&E (C84), 5Crime (C85), 5Medical (C107), 5Yorkshire Vet (C108), 5Bargain-Loving Brits (C118), 5Trucking Hell (C119), 5History (C128) and Milkshake! (C360).
As you can probably tell, most of these fall into the category of being Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels, which are special dedicated channels that tend to only offer content and schedules based on either a single TV show or theme. Five of the new channels (5Movies, 5Medical, 5Yorkshire Vet, 5History and Milkshake!) are said to be exclusive to Freely, but that isn’t strictly true as 5’s own streaming platform / app – available via multiple devices – also provides access to them.
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Last month Freely said their platform now had well over 1 million users (up from 500,000 from Sep-Dec 2025) and the number of Freeview homes in 2034 is forecast to fall to 860,000 (here). Freely currently expects to be in 10.5 million UK households by 2034. The figures give some context to the Government’s recently proposed plan to switch-off terrestrial TV signals in either 2034 or 2044 as part of a wider change to reflect the move to internet-based streaming (here).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels, so rubbish then. Not because they are ad supported, but because fast channels do seem to show rubbish.
So if i used Freeview, still nothing to get me to go and get a set with Freely or a freely set-top box.
How are these not just the same as ‘categories’ within the 5 app? Why dies making it a channel differ?
The same content is shown but the difference is a fast channel has a schedule and appears with a listing in the channel guide alongside all the other ones.
It allows live channel surfing rather than scrolling through program names and then episodes on the apps.
Also if you get into watching a show you will likely see the next episode or something similar straight after.
Many of these fast channels are already on other platforms like rakuten, pluto (same ownership as 5) and Plex so saves clicking away to a different app. LG and Samsung TV’s have similar services that integrate into the terrestrial TV guide so Freely is just following that trend.
@Peter H got it, thanks
Still waiting for an Apple TV app.
I genuinely think they’re missing a trick with this rollout.
Freely is great. I have the Manhattan Aero box – changing the channels is just as fast as satellite/freeview and the picture quality is very good.
Three downsides at the moment: (i) ITV requires you to sign up to ITVx, which is annoying (ii) ITV’s frame rate appears to be maybe only 25Hz? It is very noticeable during sports, and (iii) the subtitle formatting varies across channels. Some work needs to be done on this front.
A smaller personal thing that bugs me: the Aero box doesn’t allow you to put the clock in 24 hour format only 12 hour format (a small thing I know, but it should be an option!).
So not that great then.
It is a bit strange that it is not possible to watch ITV unless people have an ITVX account.
ITV channels look poorer than BBC channels on just about every platform. Even ITV1 HD on Freeview looks noticeably inferior to the BBC HD channels. They just broadcast at the minimum bitrate they think they can get away with.
They need to concentrate on getting more genuine linear channels onto the platform from Freeview where some channels still remain exclusively available with an aerial.
These channels don’t add any value whatsoever since all the content they show can be “freely” streamed via the channel 5 app.
So what are the 11 new channels?
Read the 2nd paragraph of the article, perhaps you’d like each sentence to have it’s own channel ;-}
‘5’ apparently can’t cope with a 1:many relationship of channel:program, either that or their ‘consumers can’t, no doubt they’ll also suffer when they realise a ‘program’ micht have many episodes and they want a channel for each episode next
So now a channels isnt a channel any more (1:Many programs) its just a program (1:1) whitout any other program options/possibility. Seems like someone is chasing numbers rather than any sensible improvement by previous / old / existing measures.
Just imagine being stuck with one of their ‘channels’ ‘bargain brits in the sun’ and nothing but 24×7 sic.
If every ‘program, was given a channel how many ‘channels’ will a watching device need to handle – just imagine scrolling that ‘list’
Given this BS approach how many ‘channels’ do BBC alone offer/provide!!!
Shouldn’t we make every episode in a series its own channel cor! we’d have milliens if not billions ffs.
What’s that in English?
Ultimately, FAST TV is for people who:
a) use their TV as a talking lamp, and just want continuous audio/pictures without having to press buttons periodically
b) use their TV as a radio with added pictures (ditto).
Maybe briefly dipping into the content while doing other things.
Still counts as eyeballs for advertisers, which is the real reason it exists.
I wonder if these extra channels will also show up on Roku Live’s FAST offerings (will check when at home later, unless someone beats me to it). Or in the My5 channel app.
May not be immediate of course, but I can’t see why 5 (owned by Paramount Skydance) would not want to do this
Channels are on the Roku “My5” streamming channel/app, but not the Roku “Live TV” menu option (nothing from ITV/C4/5 on that FAST option).