Is everyone looking forward to mooted new TV channel “Virgin 1“?
It’s said to include programmes currently on other Virgin Media channels like Bravo, Challenge, Trouble and Living. And the channel will be available on Freeview too.
For Virgin Media customers there’ll be on-demand functionality.
“It will be a creative tour de force and a cutting-edge example of any time, any place content,” said Virgin Media Television head Jonathan Webb.
Now a cynic might suggest that this channel already exists. It’s called FTN and it’s terrible.
Does anyone ever watch it? According to BARB, it had a 0.3% share in multi-channel homes in May (this is actually not that bad in the world of multi-channel, but to put it in comparison, ITV2 had 1.9% and E4 had 1.3%).
I’d be a little more interested if I’d learnt that Virgin Media buyers had been out in Los Angeles last month for the LA Screenings. This is when, once US networks have announced their schedules for the next year, international buyers go and play the game of roulette, doing deals for those new shows (and renewing deals for older shows), all the while hoping that the ones they buy don’t get canceled. Last season, many did, and the few episodes UK networks committed to are now showing up in drips and drabs.
[Update] Well it seems that Virgin Media has been shopping in LA. The front page of this week’s Broadcast reports that it has bought The Sarah Connor Chronicles, a Terminator spin-off scheduled for this autumn. It’s also picked up all of the Star Trek franchise, some 624 hours of programming.
There are also a couple of new commissions (including, ahem, one from a sister company of my employer, Ginger TV).
This all does sound a little more exciting than before admittedly. A little more exciting anyway. But there are going to be an awful lot of these general entertainment third tier stations.
* Note that despite working for a similarly named company, I have nothing to do with Virgin or Virgin Media, and these views are my own and don’t represent my company blah blah blah.