Virgin 1 becomes Channel One

No but if they're planning complete rebrands I doubt they'd keep anything related to Virgin's hold over them.



Not to mention manning the phones at BT during Comic Relief.

It's not a matter of not wanting to keep the brand, they legally can't keep the name Virgin 1 because they aren't licenced to use it.

I've not heard of any other rebrands within the Living TV Group of channels. LIVING, LIVINGit, LIVINGloves and Bravo all have fairly recent ident packages, all of which are quite nice.

It's obviously just a temporary situation until they can work out what to do with their Freeview slots and newly-purchased channels.

The purchase of the 'Living TV group' still has to be cleared and they haven't renewed the Virgin branding. The need to keep the channel and all it's commitments as a going concern in case the deal falls through. Once it does they'll most likely eventually quietly close 'Channel One' and reuse the Freeview slot for something else. They have the current SSN soon to be Sky 3+1 to find a use for too

It was specifically excluded from the purchase agreement: so either Virgin (the licencee, not Virgin Media) didn't want to allow it, or Sky didn't want it. I suspect the latter.

However, I agree that 'Channel One' doesn't sound like a permanent name.

I think it's a bad name choice because channel one is BBC One in many peoples minds.
How about LTV 1?

Perhaps it is a working title, or a transitional title. In that logo only the "one" is stylised, they could quite easily change the "channel" bit to anything, really. Although I don't think they will.

Naming a channel 'Dave' was once considered a stupid move.

It wasn't Virgin Media's to licence to Sky, they only licence it themselves from Richard Branson. Sky would have had to make a new agreement with Branson in order to keep the brand.

Given Sky's own brand is fairly strong, I struggle to see why they would want to pay for another brand, even one as strong as Virgin. I do agree "Channel One" sounds like a short term solution for while Living TV Group remains a seperately run business. Ultimately I imagine it will be fully integrated into BSkyB and its channels given "Sky" branding of some sort.

It wouldn't surprise me if they rebranded it as another sodding Living channel after a few months.

Which is why I said...

Perhaps they would be better off renaming it Absoulte TV.

Pre-launch promo for the change to Channel One:

http://www.theidentgallery.com/uploads/channel-one-pre-launch-promo.mp4

Note the break-bumper that follows - a little ironic!

Absolute Radio is owned by a completely different company. It's not related to Sky in anyway, so they couldn't call it that.