jj20x

The point is cost. Adding extra infrastructure to add multiple low audience channels forces up prices for the end user. That may well make a handful of customers happy to receive a niche channel but if the price increase results in thousands of customers leaving, it's not a sensible move.

The BBC has funds to invest in that sort of technology, many of the smaller broadcasters do not.

The age wasn't the issue, the fact that they are already repeated with content spread thinly across multiple channels in the Sony bouquet also dilutes the need for further repeats on a timeshift channel. But as these programmes are very dated, they probably have little appeal to the younger audience and are more likely to be viewed by an older audience recapturing their youth.

But you don't see requests for most of those channels appearing on this thread, there is low demand. They are also low budget operations, unlikely to be able to meet the cost of any additional infrastructure required to carry multiple additional channels. They are far more suited to IPTV delivery. The simple reason that most of these channels aren't on VM is that the channels don't want or are unable to pay enough to cover VMs costs AND there is insufficient demand to pass the extra cost onto the viewer. Catch 22. (It wasn't actually my shortlist, just a group of channels I copied and pasted from your original post to use as an example).