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Sky's Freeview Channel Proposal

Mark.J

Administrator
Staff member
ISPreview Team
It's not really ISP news so I'll put it here, but Ofcom's latest news details what Sky would like to do with its Freeview TV channels:

Sky currently provides Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three on the DTT platform on a free-to-air basis. Under the proposal, these channels would be replaced with Sky Sports 1 and, in the evening, Sky One (including an hour of Sky News content) and Sky Movies SD1. Sky would use the remainder of its capacity to retail two further channels from third party providers in the daytime: a factual channel and a children's channel.

Development of further services continues to be a matter for discussion between the two parties concerned.

Sky and NGW require consent from Ofcom before they are able to implement their proposal. The proposal raises various issues which Ofcom must consider, in particular in relation to its impact on competition.
Now it's unclear whether the Movies and SkyOne channels would contain identical content to their bigger brothers, I'd be surprised if they did because it'd kill some of my need for Sky at home :) . Having new LOST and BSG episodes on Freeview would be very good.

However that's probably not the case and I suspect that the new proposals are only about channels in name rather than content, for marketing reasons. I don't want to see SkyNews24 gone either, I much prefer SN24 to the BBC which I frequently find to be politically biased and imbalanced on some reports in general, but that's my own opinion.

We already lost the ABC1 comedy channel (scrubs ftw) and next somebody will probably pull UK History too (just me saying that) to make Freeview feel pointless.
 
I'd quite happily lose QVC / Bid Up etc tv in favour of the Sky channels. I would even pay a small premium to have the full Sky channels proposed, Particularly Sky 1 (assuming they are the same as the current premium content).

Also, since I have a Freeview HDD recorder, I'd happily live without the +1 channels such as E4+1 (exactly the same as E4, but an hour later)

There are several channels I currently have blocked by my Freeview (personally, I'd lose the History channel too).

I would prefer to keep the news channels we have though
 
Sky currently provides Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three on the DTT platform on a free-to-air basis. ...

Not available where I live, though sadly I can get the recently launched Nuts TV. :(
 
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Unlike the existing channels, it seems that the replacement channels will be fee based.
Broadcasting regulator, Ofcom, has ordered a ten-week public debate on Sky’s plans to charge subscription fees for three of its Freeview channels – the broadcaster wants to remove Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three.

In their place Sky would like to broadcast Sky Sports 1 all day, and in evenings Sky One and Sky Movies SD1 (standard not high-definition), all of which would be subscription channels.

Unsurprisingly, subscription rivals on Freeview including Setanta Sports and TopUp TV are not pleased. They believe Sky will use its power to undercut their prices and steal viewers. The two companies believe Sky already has a dominant position with its monopoly on satellite broadcasting.

http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2007/10/ofcom_to_challe.html

Ofcom are inviting responses for its consultation period until mid December:
Details of the consultation are at

http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/dtv/
&
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consult/condocs/dtv/howtorespond/
 
Maybe it is partly ISP related then as Sky's Picnic service proposed the same channels for one of its forthcoming bundles. But SkyOne only in the evenings? Not much good if you watch repeats at other times because you have to work late.
 
Bad news for the competition, Freeview and digital terrestrial television. I'll explain why:

Freeview is now the most popular digital television platform in the United Kingdom. Sky envisioned Freeview being a distant second in comparison to Sky's satellite service back in 2002 when it joined the Freeview consortium. It could afford to place Sky Travel, Sky News and Sky Sports News on the platform thinking that more and more people would pay for the channels by going to Satellite. Sadly (or thankfully!) Sky's predictions were wrong. As the platform increased in size, with channels such as E4, Film4, ITV3 and even their own Sky Three joining the platform.

The success of Freeview may have taken Sky by surprise. Indeed, not only is Sky now playing second place to Freeview, it is probably the biggest reason why people are dumping their satellite subscriptions, something which Freesat doesn't have yet.

Sky's response to Freeview isn't good, one person high up at Sky dismissed Freeview as a platform for pensioners and the economically inactive. They are strongly against free-to-air high definition broadcasting on digital terrestrial television. It is also been shown that in a number of threads on Digital Spy that people have been told that either E4 would go subscription or that Freeview wouldn't be around come digital switch-over. They tried to prevent E4 going free-to-air on Freeview back in 2005. Director General of the BBC, Mark Thompson has accused Sky of deliberately sabotaging digital switch-over and being opposed to the development of Freeview. Indeed, in Whitehaven, Sky ran adverts telling people who's analogue signals are to be switched off this month that the only way to get digital would be to subscribe to Sky. The Advertising Standards Authority ruled against the adverts.

Freeview is the biggest threat to Sky in terms of subscriber numbers, so they will do anything to try and reverse the decline. If it means significantly reducing the amount of channels Freeview has or persuading other broadcasters to join Picnic/dump Freeview, so be it. All Ofcom have been shown to do is let Sky do whatever they want time and time again, and with Sky being so focused, planned and detailed in their plans for Picnic, its likely that the consultation will just be formal procedure before the plans are approved. I and other forum members on another forum believe that the plans will go ahead. :(

Wouldn't surprise me if we hear in the future other broadcasters (if Picnic is successful - remember Sky Multichannels on Sky analogue in 1993?) changing channels to pay or Sky doing like Five did with Top Up TV and buying out channels out of their contracts, and replacing them with subscription channels. I'm very surprised with Sky's dominance on ITV (for the time being anyway) that they haven't pushed their influence to replace ITV2+1 with another subscription channel, especially as there are reports that Virgin Media wants to purchase that stream for Virgin 1 to go 24 hours on Freeview. Sky never stands still and expands its services to give higher returns to their shareholders. Freeview is a major block to expansion.

Top Up TV is likely to suffer, especially as it is clear that Setanta can be picked up using new Picnic boxes. BT Vision and Virgin Media are likely to suffer too, but Sky's biggest threat and no.1 enemy now is Freeview. Although, if Sky was left as the remaining pay option on satellite and terrestrial, it gives them a very worrying foothold in the pay TV market. For those not in cable or IPTV areas, Sky would be the only option. Sky could also use its dominance to force subscription rates up whilst paying the channels that use its encryption less money from subscription rates. Essentially, Sky would have a virtual monopoly.

And as they intend to use MPEG-4, any HD service on DTT (using MPEG-4 as standard for HD) means that Sky will have the infrastructure ready to run a premium HD service on both satellite and terrestrial, well before the BBC/ITV et al, if they even get a look in. If you don't have cable and IPTV can't handle HDTV, Sky will be the only way to go.

All's fair in love and war, and if it takes the end of Freeview, they'll do it.

P.S. Even if Sky's plans are rejected, Sky will still be pulling its current channels from Freeview, so regardless of what happens, say goodbye to Sky News, Sky Three and Sky Sports News.
 
in my opinion freeview is no threat to sky. There are always going to be those of us who will never pay extra for tv (i'm not one of thse btw). I've long been a Sky subscriber and its worth every penny we spend on it, especially the HD stuff. I don't think the current model of free tv will be around in say 10 or 20 years time.

I've just joied Virgin Media :s any news on when they are going to talking about the sky channels on that again?
 
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