Virgin TV?

There is a rumour doing the rounds on the Digital Spy forums that we might see a Virgin TV channel on Freeview and SKY in the not to distant future. Interesting idea and one that could be a VERY good thing if it has a big enough budget.

The main driving force for the rumour is the little spat between NTL (soon to be Virgin Media or something along those lines) and SKY over the whole merging with ITV thing.

That and the fact that Virgin have tried to launch a TV channel in the past in the form of bidding for the fifth TV frequency (something that will become less and less relevant over the next fea years as analogue is replaced with freeview).

Basically the idea that’s doing the rounds is that FTN, the non-entity of a repeats channel will be replaced and renamed with a Virgin branded channel and the Digital Spy users seem to be hoping that as it carries the Virgin brand it will be pretty good.

I’d like to think it would be good as well. They can’t be ITV in terms of scale and viewer base (could easily be in terms of quality of content) but with the right budget and the Virgin brand, Virgin One (or whatever they call it) could easily be a big player in the new all digital freeview market.

Virgin is such a strong brand (away from Trains that is) that if they offered a general entertainment TV channel with a reasonably decent and varied line-up it could easily compete with at least Channel 4 and five but would also be up there with the best of the ‘Big 4s’ extra channels.

It would also be on something like channel 20 on Freeview so would have a very good position on people’s box. It’s also getting to a point where advertising revenue is greater than the subscription revenue you can get from SKY - taking in account the fact SKY have announced subscription revenue is likely to go down (the amount SKY pays TV channels).

Then again with the likes of Channel4 launching 4oD, SKY getting into the on demand market, BBC launching iPlayer, rumours of TV sales from iTunes in the new year and on demand services from BT and what will be Virgin Media is there really any need for more linear television channels?

Maybe the bandwidth would be better used offering a limited on demand service - say 5 or 6 shows every day that people can download in their own time.

That’s certainly how I’d do news channels instead of the pointless void that is 24 hours news. Unfortunatly the whole 24 hour news nonsense seems to be increasing with Al Jazerra and the new one from France.

The best way for the BBC to do News24 (in my opinion and it’s my blog so I CAN express my opinion) would be to scrap the presenters and 24 hour bollox and just make it an on demand service.

Press red to get in and then you’re given the choice to either read or watch all the reports that have been filed - you could have a very basic video service at the front end showing the headlines but you have to press red to get the full reports.

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