Virgin 1 becomes Channel One

At one point they were going to turn Bravo into a male version of living. Unfortunately at the same time Living was manning up so to speak, by aiming at a wider audience.

Good news about Challenge going on Freeview, but why dump a long established name like Bravo?

Is it fair to say Bravo has been run down to a similar extent as Challenge in recent years? Sure they've had one or two high profile acquisitions but do they really outweigh the sea of worthless tat that populates the channel under the guise of men's lifestyle?

A long established name, yes but that doesn't mean it's necessarily a valued one. I'm not sure the channel has really caught on with the general public like some others. It has of course changed formats several times so it's never really established itself as 'the home of....'

Also channels targetting a male audience aren't exactly rare

Not really, Bravo's had a complete rebrand at least once within that period for one thing. Challenge has had no acquisitions all year long, and even some bedrocks of their schedule (such as Catchphrase) have lapsed and not been renewed. Just take a quick look at their websites to see where the money has gone. Hell - Challenge hasn't even had a basic channel promo since Christmas, they've just looped out ones for the other VMTV channels much like Trouble did in its last days.

I think that's the case for many digital channels though - one or two high profile shows and a lot of dross to prop up the schedules. (Heck, look even at HBO's schedule in the US and the quality shows they're known of only account for a couple of hours (plus repeats) of the schedule each week).

Considering though this deal has long been in the planning it seems madness that Sky2 was effectively turned into Sky1+1 when they really could have taken content from some of these channels and relaunched it as an effective complementary channel to Sky1.

I have watched Star Trek: DS9 from the first episode of series 1 on Virgin 1 now Channel One.

According to Digiguide there are no programmes after 30/09/10.

The channel is going off air on the day they show episode 23 of series 7, which is the final series. There are only 26 episodes!

So it looks like the final 3 episodes will not be broadcast! Even if Sky 3 or whatever picks up the rights what are the chances they will start to show it from the 3rd last episode!!

Oh well

How could they prior to having regulatory approval? As I understand they don't actually take control of the channels/sell advertising for them until January?

Are you sure that is the final day broadcasting and not just the last day they have listings for?

I thought that as well. Not even the BBC will give you definite listings much more than 2 weeks in advance, and I very much doubt the listings will either.

Anyway the Living TV Group website is still accepting commission ideas for programming for Channel One:
http://www.livingtvgroup.co.uk/commissioning/channel1/looking_forYTD.php

That is just the Virgin 1 page Find & Replace'd with Channel One though.

Surely, Channel One can't be going any time soon - they're still running trailers for 'V' which is coming soon... unless they show a couple and then shift them over to a Sky channel?

I would be surprised if it closes before the end of the year. There are several things Sky will have to do before closeing the channel, we know there are going to be redudencies, but no one will know who is going as of yet, they are not going to close the channel and then have all these people sitting around doing nothing.