Out of the ashes of the ITV Digital disaster has risen a new broadcasting platform, the unendearingly named Freeview. It's basically a combination of low rent TV channels and the BBC's burgeoning portfolio of TV and radio. Can it really succeed where its predecessor failed so horribly?
Actually, there are a few nice things about Freeview. Most importantly, it works with the old ON/ITV Digital set-top boxes. This means that subscribers to that failed service really don't have to pay anything. Of course, there are a couple of slight drawbacks to this. These units are not covered by any form of guarantee so when they go wrong
If you want to get the service from scratch you need a new box. These are available for £99, by strange coincidence the cost of a year's subscription pre-paid to the old regime. At least if you go down this route the decoder is your property and there are no additional costs in the way of subscription charges or the like. Well, in fact the whole thing's pretty much funded by the license fee so you pay that way. Still, the telly poll tax is the same whether you're in or out of digital TV, so you may as well be in.
To be fair, the BBC's digital offerings are the main incentive to get Freeview. BBC 3/Choice is a young person orientated entertainment channel and as such is fairly watchable. There are early showings of many top BBC2 shows (most recently League of Gentlemen series 3) and a good selection of specially made programming centring around the strangely enjoyable nightly Liquid News programme. BBC4 is where all the serious stuff that used to be on in the old Reithian public service days of the Beeb has been parked. Under-publicised and deliberately obscure, there can be fantastic stuff on this channel but you'd be hard pressed to find it. The childrens' channels are fine for kids, News 24 is okay as far as it goes. The audio-only services are potentially quite useful as things like Radio 5 Live Sports Extra and Radio 7 (new comedy station) are interesting and how many people actually have their own digital radio?
At the moment, the line up of the other Freeview channels is not that strong. Sky are supposedly a partner in this venture, but have only contributed a couple of news channels and something called "Sky Travel". Obviously no one expects them to let us have the movie or sports stuff gratis, but surely they could have stretched to Sky One? The two music channels are both pretty good. TMF is made by MTV and whiles away the hours with current chart music. The Hits is a straight clone of The Box, but none the worse for that. Considering ITV Digital's music line-up used to be MTV plus some of Play UK, Freeview is a considerable improvement.
Of the other stuff, there's UKHistory, which is fine, and coming soon UKtv, a lifestyle channel. No UKGold though, not that I care. No E4, Granada Plus or Carlton Cinema, but instead there is QVC, ITV2, ITV News and a general entertainment channel starting in January calling itself "t fn". In general, this is a service which is restricted to 30 channels and struggles to fill them. The last thing I would advocate is extending this range because now the broadcast signal is much stronger and it should be kept that way. However, if take-up of Freeview is strong, advertising revenue will improve and I can see that the big boys will have to get aboard. This is would be good news for the viewers, although a total disaster for The Parliament Channel.
At the end of the day, Freeview is a much more realistic service than ITV Digital ever was. It's not got the technology to compete with satellite and cable. If you don't want to pay for those, it's certainly a good way to expand the number of channels you can receive for a minimal cost. Remember though, that some things are only free because no one would actually pay for them.
Considering it? Get more information from www.freeview.co.uk/ and www.bbc.co.uk/digital/
Chris Denton.
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