Men and Motors to launch on Freeview in May

Broadcast today has mention M&M may timeshare with their new kids channels. That would kind of make sense.

They've started trailing the channel on ITV2 (at least).
Not sure if they are running promos elsewhere.

http://www.rp-networkservices.com/tvforum/uploads/mmsoon.jpg

A promo loop has started on the channel itself.

I seem to remember that when ITV plc bought Sky out of GSkyB there was a clause which allowed 49% of any future sale of "Men & Motors" to go to Sky. Surely by morphing it to ITV4 then GSkyB would be selling the channel to ITV plc.

I'm no commercial expert, but this could be the reason for delaying the full change to ITV4 - waiting for the channel to make a profit on Freeview before finally paying off Sky and dissolving GSkyB for good in an official "merger" with ITV plc.

Of course, I could be barking up the wrong tree entirely - or just plain barking

I'd forgotten about that clause, you're right though that would make perfect sense to me.

How long have Men & Motors been showing adverts in full 16:9? The last time that I saw adverts they were basically 14:9 going out in a 4:3 frame, but now the logo and everything is moved.

Is this the first of ITV's handling of the channel?

With Men & Motors on all platforms, could we see ITV putting highlights of formula 1 and the world rallys, as they are motors after all?

Well that was a damp squid of a launch. There was the holding screen counting down initally with "3 minutes" with every minute the mm spinning around and the number of minutes decreasing. Then it switched at 10 seconds to 10 at the bottom and decrease. At zero some flicker as they switched across, then a bog standard continuity announcement introducing the next programme.

Understandably as the channel was already running on Sky and cable they were limited as to what they could do, but it would have been nice for the announcer to add "Welcome all FreeView viewers along with cable and satellite viewers to Men & Motors. Next up is...".

For about 2 weeks now. The DOG also behaves in the same way as those on ITV2/3, EG. disappearing during trailers, idents, sponsorship credits etc, but not the actual adverts.

Hey, I didn't even think it was launching until 6pm on Freeview, or at least that was what the loop was saying last week when I'd last looked.

I assume that Men & Motors now broadcasts from LNN? As it has the DOG problems during the break, it also seems to have an announcer now, I think the woman doing the announcements also does ITV1.

Launched at 11am, I tuned in by fluke as I didn't know what time it launched.

I don't think so, she sounds like local radio presenter Philippa Collins from Luton's Chiltern FM.

www.philippacollins.com has a voice demo.