Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardCoulter
Unfortunately, it never appeared. It has been speculated that this was a ruse by ITV to engage in a bit of LCN trading and that they had no intention of ever launching this channel
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There have been instances in the past on Freeview were a Coming Soon slate was up for many months and the channel still launched.
And I don't think the LCN rules would allow it without the channel broadcasting anything ever. Otherwise it would have happened more often.
Freeview has a history of convoluted maneuvers to get channel numbers. E.g. Sony Movies using Movie Mix and content from More Than Movies to slowly morph the channel from a quiz/shopping channel to get around the rules of the time. Freesports bought into The Store to do an LCN swap a couple years ago. The latter is more straightforward, so presumably the rules changed.