General : Changes to Virgin TV (2020)

[vincerooney]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

I would be a little surprised if Disney+ did not arrive on 1 October. VM were reported to be in discussions with them since just before it was launched on Sky. The removal of the Disney channels on both platforms would appear to be a good reason to set Virgin’s launch date as 1 October.

This could be quite a day if we get the Sky deal launched at the same time.

I’m still not convinced that the UKTV deal has been activated yet. Did anyone notice any difference?

is the sky deal you mention in regards to the UHD channels? I'd imagine the UKTV deal is also UHD?

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by vincerooney

is the sky deal you mention in regards to the UHD channels? I'd imagine the UKTV deal is also UHD?

The Sky deal relates to UHD content and an increased VOD library.

The UKTV deal was increased VOD only, apart from a channel change from memory, which I think has already been implemented.

[jobbie8]

The app Hopster is new today, you have to sub to Kids channels to use it. I wonder when MTV app is coming? I've seen it mentioned by VM a few times lately.

[Media Boy UK]

Broadcast: No more Top of the Pops as BBC Four set to make way for BBC Three

Media Web Site is reporting that BBC Three is set to return as a linear TV channel.

Reports say it will broadcast after 7pm using space of BBC Four.

Note: This story first appeared online on September 28th but Media Boy HQ did not see it until time of this post.

[cheekyangus]

Broadcast magazine reworded their article not long after it first appeared because of the inaccuracies about the way the Cbeebies/CBBC/BBC3/BBC4 space allocation on Freeview was worded.

Lots of other websites and social media posts pounced on the initial "oh no! BBC4 is doomed" angle before they amended it.

[Legendkiller2k]

Originally Posted by Media Boy

Broadcast: No more Top of the Pops as BBC Four set to make way for BBC Three

Media Web Site is reporting that BBC Three is set to return as a linear TV channel.

Reports say it will broadcast after 7pm using space of BBC Four.

Note: This story first appeared online on September 28th but Media Boy HQ did not see it until time of this post.

No it'll be using the space cbbc uses as cbbc closes at 7pm then BBCTHREE will take over like how it used to be.

[Aguero9320]

Originally Posted by Legendkiller2k

No it'll be using the space cbbc uses as cbbc closes at 7pm then BBCTHREE will take over like how it used to be.

CBBC now closes at 9pm. BBC Three would utilise the CBeebies slot as that closes at 7pm. BBC4 would move to the other slot. Hope this helps.

[vincerooney]

Originally Posted by Aguero9320

CBBC now closes at 9pm. BBC Three would utilise the CBeebies slot as that closes at 7pm. BBC4 would move to the other slot. Hope this helps.

i never really understood why bbc 3 was axed in the first place. i've always seen the content of BBC 2 and BBC 4 to be similar? Apologies if that comes across as ignorant! BBC 1= general entertainment BBC2= factual BBC 3= Youth oriented/experimental.

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by vincerooney

i never really understood why bbc 3 was axed in the first place. i've always seen the content of BBC 2 and BBC 4 to be similar? Apologies if that comes across as ignorant! BBC 1= general entertainment BBC2= factual BBC 3= Youth oriented/experimental.

BBC Three was axe to make way for £80m to move to BBC One to make new Drama shows.

I feel with the BBC looking for cuts all the time they need to do the following: (My own views)

-Axe BBC Radio 4 LW.
-All BBC local English Radio Channels cut down to just local news and Sports and rebrand as BBC Radio England.
-CBBC and CBeebies become one and broadcasts from 6am to midnight.
-BBC Red Button, BBC Three and BBC Four become an all day BBC Three Channel from 6am until about 3am.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by Media Boy

-All BBC local English Radio Channels cut down to just local news and Sports and rebrand as BBC Radio England

One of the very few things that the BBC's commercial rivals can't accuse the BBC of encroaching of their turf (whether justified or not) is regional radio.

All commercial stations are already ditching as much local content as they can get away with as part of OFCOM agreements, leaving only the BBC from the major broadcast companies to have local voices on air.

However even there the BBC are also already making cuts

https://www.theguardian.com/media/20...nal-programmes

[cheekyangus]

Originally Posted by Media Boy

BBC Three was axe to make way for £80m to move to BBC One to make new Drama shows.

I feel with the BBC looking for cuts all the time they need to do the following: (My own views)

-Axe BBC Radio 4 LW.
-All BBC local English Radio Channels cut down to just local news and Sports and rebrand as BBC Radio England.
-CBBC and CBeebies become one and broadcasts from 6am to midnight.
-BBC Red Button, BBC Three and BBC Four become an all day BBC Three Channel from 6am until about 3am.

£80m to my recollection was the entire BBC3 budget, they only saved about £50m closing the broadcast side. The saving wasn't all reinvested, and it mostly simply prevented cuts to other services.

I agree with what BenMcr said re: local radio.

I'm surprised you didn't mention Radio Scotland MW too, since you mentioned R4LW. Same reasoning, virtually a duplicate most of the time.

Part of the reason for the success of CBeebies, aside from the programme quality, is that parents feel comfortable plonking their kids in front of the screen and not having to worry about the content changing to something inappropriate. If they merged CBBC content in, they would have worry about it.

Also the demographic of CBBC tends to think of themselves as grown-up and has increasingly moved to watching adult entertainment programming, more E4 or BBC3 type material, over the years since we all moved from only having 4 channels. They'd be much more likely to watch normal adult entertainment after 7pm. That's presumably why they chose to have the kids channels end at 7pm and BBC3&4 start when they launched in the first place.

There's barely enough programming to fill BBC1&2 daytime, why would they want a 3rd general adult channel daytime schedule to fill?

And the virtually the whole point of the Red Button stream these days is to help with event programming that won't fit on a schedule, merging it would defeat the point of it. The Red Button broadcast stream will eventually disappear anyway as the Connected Internet Service becomes the normal.

In theory BBC3 SD could return 24/7 on Freeview as the space BBC Scotland SD channel uses on Freeview isn't used outside of Scotland. In practice it won't be considered as they can't have major regional provision differences for national services and need to be platform neutral.

----

Back on topic. The new ITV HD subregions that are apparently testing on Satellite are likely to be enough to mean ITV HD can move to 103 on VM. Which means 113 will become available everywhere.

Presumably this will help with S4C, BBC Scotland (outside Scotland) and BBC Alba needing to be within the Top24 EPG places as required by OFCOM by January.

I found out last night BBC Alba is moving on Sky tomorrow and will then fulfill this requirement, so presumably VM will have to make changes to fulfill this fairly soon.

[cheekyangus]

Just announced.

The TV versions of the BBC News and Sport apps are closing "by the end of the year". The Lottery and Weather info is also being removed on Connected versions like VM use.

The BBC Blog post about it.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/aboutthe...e-634f4be28480

---------- Post added at 12:48 ---------- Previous post was at 12:46 ----------

The bit at the end of the 2nd last paragraph of the post doesn't apply to VM as there is no Text service available as described.

[jobbie8]

After the Disney channels closed last night, most of the other kids channels are free to view today.

[Mad Max]

Buy Disney's Mulan today in the Virgin store, only £19.99, yeah right Virgin,

[Phunkenstein]

Originally Posted by Mad Max

Buy Disney's Mulan today in the Virgin store, only £19.99, yeah right Virgin,

That’s the price set by Disney across all platforms; it’s the same on Apple, Amazon, Google and Sky.