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Originally Posted by ozsat
It was only a couple of years ago the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 launched Britbox - where is that now in the UK?
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It went the same way every product goes when nobody really understands what it’s meant to be for. What was it: a video library for classic Doctor Who and 1970s sitcoms or a platform for new British productions? And given that every classic British show worth re-watching has already been watched to death over the past 20 years on various Satellite channels and/or Netflix, was there enough value in any of it to be worth paying for now? And why pay for new British content from (mostly) ITV when there’s a ton of free-to-view new British content across multiple channels already, thanks to the way broadcasting is structured in the UK?
The truth is, Apple TV+, Netflix, Disney+ and Prime TV all do rather well at British made original material. Heck, Disney’s making whole chunks of its Marvel and Star Wars universes in the UK and it’s not even relegating its British actors to token villain roles. The idea that we needed a distinctively British streaming service was always a bit odd.
Where we’re at right now with this is very similar to where we were with OnDigital 20 odd years ago. What was supposed to be the digital terrestrial replacement for traditional analogue broadcast flopped because the marketing majored on the stuff they wanted to sell you rather than on the fact that all the public service channels, plus a lot more, were on the service for free. ITV digital tried to take it on, made the same basic errors, and flopped again. Only when they streamlined it and branded it Freeview did the public get the message and the analogue switch-off could be planned for.
AFAIK Britbox didn’t even try to act as an aggregator for public service channels, which is absolutely should have done given the PSBs jointly owned it. That might have given it a chance at attracting users (tho someone tell me if it did do that, I didn’t use it). If broadcast over IP is to be a part of the future mix then the EPG we’re all used to needs to be replicated somehow, and like Freeview and Freesat before it, Freely might just do what earlier commercial efforts failed to do.