uktv history

[peeanut]

Does anyone know why uktv History has cut it's viewing hours on freeview?

[Buenchico]

It will almost certainly be due to financial constraints.

Freeview is a company which is jointly owned by the BBC, Sky, ITV and the company that operates the transmitters. It was set up to invest in the development of digital broadcasting, which involved a large financial investment. To recover this investment, and to continue to make profits, it has to charge television and radio stations for access to the Freeview platform. (That's no different to the situation where the BBC and other broadcasters pay to use analogue transmitters).

Broadcasters also have to pay for the rights to transmit the programmes that they air. If they air the programme on multiple platforms (e.g. on both satellite and Freeview) they have to pay higher fees for the broadcasting rights.

Commercial companies, like UKTV, need to cover their costs by selling advertising within their programmes. The amount of money they can charge for, say, a 30 second commercial depends upon the audience figures for the programme where it appears.

If programmes are getting low audience figures, they can't charge much for advertising, which will leave them with insufficient funds to pay the Freeview access charges and the broadcasting rights for the programmes. When this happens, many stations simply choose to remove their programming from Freeview. (Men & Motors is one example). It seems likely that UKTV has examined their books and decided that a 'full-time' presence on Freeview is not economically viable but that they can carry on with 'part-time' broadcasting because they'll pay lower fees for the broadcasting rights and for Freeview access, while only losing a small amount of advertising revenue.

Chris