Freeview: The DTT Thread

Bearing in mind the number of people who play for real (with real money) and the ideology that you don't get back if your number(s) don't come up, how do you think they make money? You don't get your money back in an armed bandit if a winning combination doesn't roll round do you? This company doesn't run on fresh air you know.

The website for NetPlay TV states they take in £20m in bets per month for their Live Roulette outlet alone. Add in that they run Live Bingo, Live Blackjack, have shed loads of other "real cash" games on their website and they're now on their own Freeview channel. Should be a nice little earner - Corporate website says up to June 2008 the turnover was £10m.

I completely disagree with people who rely on the government to dictate what is good and what isn't.

I'm not saying the market is perfect - only that it's better at determining what people want than govenrment is. The government, after all, is not some omniscient entity. It's comprised of people who are likely to be just as 'gullible' as the rest of us.

When Freeview was introduced, back in the post-ITV Digital gloom of October/November 2002, one could argue that the impetus was directed in sharing out the capacity in a fairly balanced way. We had QVC and TV Travel Shop. Everything else was a mix of music, entertaiment, news and lifestyle. Then Bid-Up TV got a slot, then Price Drop, then Ideal World, then we lost TV Travel Shop but gained Thomas Cook TV.... then the gaming got involved. It was a bit of a slippery slope to the observer back in 2004.

I don't mind having 1 or 2 shopping channels on Freeview. At the moment we have 3, which is almost bearable. But to have a 24 hour gaming channel, plus THREE +1 channels, which are to my mind just as bad, is taking the mickey a bit. Surely that capacity could be better used? Do we really need the +1s? Or a bimbo promoting virtualistic roulette? Or even a non-stop advert for No-Wet Wonder Foam?

My survey says no.

Or equally you could ask to we need any TV channels at all? I mean, people clearly survived before the advent of television. Viewers don't need Freeview at all. But obviously TV is a nice thing for people to have, and so long as these channels have viewers and continue to operate profitably, then there is clearly a market for them.

I'm not really too bothered about the +1 channels as they do have a use, though admittedly now with the rise of the number of people having digital recorders they're not as important as they once were, and if they were dropped they wouldn't be a huge loss to Freeview.

Frankly though it's better ITV and C4 are hoarding the slot for future use than letting some shopping or gaming channel occupy it in the mean time.

Sure the shopping and gaming channels are annoying, but is there really that much quality content that could viably be put there in its place? (bearing in mind some broadcasters are still much more committed to pay-tv).

The big free-to-air players ITV, Channel 4 and Five already have more than enough channels to spread their content around, so anything else really is just a bonus. Dave, for example, and Quest (if it's any good) needn't be there but it'd probably be greedy to expect too many more great channels on a free platform.

Compare it to the Freeview offering in Australia and you'll see how lucky we are!

I say just delete all the crap channels and enjoy the decent ones.

Well, look at the lineups on Freesat and FreesatFromSky to make your judgement there. Why not have a channel like BEN or OpenAccess on Freeview? Or one of the Zones? Or even bring in a free film channel like TrueMovies, M4M or Simply Movies to compete with Film4? Maybe one of the kids channels could break the BBC's semi-monopoly (bearing in mind you can't get CITV in Wales). There's not a lot of minority content, so maybe a British Asian channel, or a black channel? Or add a music channel like Bubble Hits or ChartShowTV?

Just examples...

Good point, more minority content such as BEN (great channel name, I've always thought) would probably be better, in our eyes, but unfortunately these channels probably just don't have the financial resources to be able to compete with some of the more profitable shopping/gaming channels for a slot on the platform. Of course you could also argue that shopping and gaming channels are minority content in themselves. And as Mr Q says, there has to be a market for these channels. But since the companies that run "Freeview" are commercial entities the slot will invariably go to the highest bidder.

What I'm saying, I guess, is that we're lucky that we've got a decent amount of decent quality channels - it could be a lot worse! Freeview itself has also improved its line-up a huge amount since its inception.

Just out of interest, I just had a look at BEN (Sky EPG 184) when I read your post. The EPG say they are currently showing 'BEN Variety Show' but it seems to be constant music videos. The technical quality is terrible. The picture keeps flickering between black and white and colour. The sound is distorted because at some point in the broadcast chain the volume has been turned up too loud. From what I have seen of it before, this is typical of their programming.

I can't judge the programme content because its not aimed at me but even if it was something I was interested in, the technical quality would make me turn over. If the choice was between this and a well produced shopping or gaming channel then my vote wouldn't go to BEN thats for sure.

Yes, but I didn't say that I do that either

Probably not, but I'd rather watch higher quality pictures than the room be taken up with the channels I delete from my box anyway.

And somebody else would rather something else.