UKTV to drop the UK bit

According to the Media Guardian the BBC Worldwide and Virgin Media joint owned UKTV network is no longer going to be UKTV on air.

First they add the TV bit for the simpler viewers who don’t know what that big box in front of them is called - now they’re taking it back off again - maybe their demographic has changed and the idiots are watching the shopping channels instead.

The company isn’t changing its name, well not yet anyway. No it’s just the on screen branding that’s going to be dropping the UKTV.

This means that one of the oldest brands in the UK Multichannel sphere, UK Gold (later UKTV Gold for the idiots) will be dropping not only the TV but also the UK bit to become just Gold!

This follows the rebranding of the confusingly named UKTV G2 (UK Gold 2) last year to Dave. A name I admired, loved and continue to love today.

The other brands in the UKTV network include (and at the moment you need to add UKTV to the start of each of these names): Drama, History, People, Documentary, Style, Homes, Gardens and Food.

I’m guessing that each of these will follow Gold and just drop the UKTV bit and be known on the EPG, in the Radio Times and on screen as Drama, Style, Documentary etc…

Now that is either a REALLY good thing or a really bad thing.

These channels will get the majority of their viewers through SKY with Virgin taking up the flack so if they can get the channel to the start of each EPG block it might just work - so have Style as the first channel in the Style block, Documentary at the start of the Documentary block, History etc….

If that doesn’t happen and they’re just stuck in the middle of the group it will look weird. I have a solution though - they need to name every channel after a person.

Here are my suggestions:

Gold - Albert
Dave - Dave
Drama - Jim (Bergerac of course)
History - Simon
People - Richard
Documentary - Lewis
Style - Rachel
Homes - Sarah
Gardens - Alan
Food - Jamie

And they can call the new channel being launched for the Richard and Judy Show - Richard and Judy. Makes sense as they’ll be the highest profile people on there.

Although, as it will also feature repeats of Torchwood they could also, eventually when the Richard and Judy thing gets dull and their show flops - call it Jack.

Apparently the new channel, launching in October is, and this is utter marketing bollocks here, being positioned as a “linear catch-up service for modern classics”.

According to the Guardian the channel will combine “high quality contemporary BBC shows”, such as Torchwood, Mistresses and Larkrise to Candleford, with films.

Gold is also changing in style and content as well as name. It’s going to move away from retro towards comedy (wouldn’t that put it in competition with Paramount Comedy?).

It will mainly focus on shows like Only Fools and Horses, Fawlty Towers and Little Briain. This is partly due to video on demand services like iTunes, 4OD, Virgin Media catchup and eventually Kangaroo making the need for repeats a bit pointless.

UKTV Drama (Jim) will also be changing to focus on crime drama with shows ranging from Miss Marple to Waking the Dead. Apparently the name they’re thinking of for the channel is Alibi.

More marketing bollocks: “The scale of change at UKTV demonstrates the magnitude of our ambition and will future-proof our business as we head towards 2012,” said Matthew Littleford, the UKTV controller.

Actually I doubt they will go with just dropping the UKTV to come up with the name - I think it’s more likely we’ll get a snappy name for each instead - like Alibi.

Share/Save