{"id":2080,"date":"2007-10-02T11:49:46","date_gmt":"2007-10-02T11:49:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/2007\/10\/new_services_on\/"},"modified":"2007-10-02T11:49:46","modified_gmt":"2007-10-02T11:49:46","slug":"new_services_on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/2007\/10\/new_services_on\/","title":{"rendered":"New Services on Multi Channel TV"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a blaze of publicity (well, they’d bought the back pages of either one or both of the free London papers), Virgin 1 launched last night at 9pm.
\nVirgin 1<\/a> (like most Virgin products – no relation to my employers), is partially Virgin Media’s response to the petty falling out between Virgin Media and Sky One. As all Virgin Media fans of 24, Lost or Battlestar Galactica know, Sky One is not carried on its service, along with Sky News and Sky Sports News.
\nSo rushed into existence comes Virgin 1, to fill some of that hole. It takes the place of Ftn on Freeview, but is available on Sky Digital alongside an obligatory “+1” flavour. I very much doubt that Sky are paying anything to Virgin Media to cover it.
\nSo what fantastic programming have they got? Well unfortunately, the Virgin 1 website<\/a> doesn’t actually provide a schedule of the “Proper Telly” they’ll be carrying. But whizzing through the Sky EPG isn’t inspiring. There’s one quite decent show which they showed on their launch night – The Riches starring Eddie Izzard and Minnie Driver. This did reasonably well on FX in the US and has been renewed for another series. The channel has also bought the Sarah Connor Chronicles which is showing on Fox in the US. I say is<\/I> but it hasn’t started yet, and isn’t due on Fox until early 2008.
\nSo if The Riches runs for three hours a week (at least two repeats), what’s on for the rest of that time? Well, it’s brutally unfair, since there are plenty of other channels showing equally as poor fare, but here’s tomorrow’s schedule:
\n0600 Knight Rider (staple of Bravo)
\n0700 Takeshi’s Castle (staple of Challenge TV)
\n0730 Takeshi’s Castle
\n0800 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
\n0830 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
\n0900 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (courtesy Challenge, courtesy of ITV)
\n1000 Nothing To Declare (never heard of it)
\n1030 Beach Patrol (who knows)
\n1100 Street Crime UK Uncut (Uncut? At 11am in the morning – it must be tough)
\n1130 Street Crime UK (This edition isn’t labelled as uncut – Bravo regular)
\n1200 Cops On Camera
\n1300 Take It Or Leave It (Challenge TV originated Richard Arnold quiz)
\n1400 Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
\n1500 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (another major purchase has seen this franchise depart Sky One)
\n1600 Knight Rider (NBC are talking about a remake you know?)
\n1700 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
\n1730 Fresh Prince of Bel Air
\n1800 Take It Or Leave It
\n1900 Cops On Camera
\n2000 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
\n2100 The Unit (previously shown on Bravo – not actually that bad)
\n2200 The Real Exorcist: Devil Hunter (This is “New & Exclusive” apparently)
\n2300 Criminal Minds (Virgin 1’s launch programme on Monday night)
\n0000 Play Live Roulette (Oh dear)
\nSo there you have it. Also showing at weekends are decent programmes like The X-Files, which’ll be edited to fit a 1600 slot. But it’s not exactly going to have Sky One worried, and it’ll take some real investment to become a major player in the multi-channel world. I’d have thought of Virgin Media’s portfolio, Living TV is currently the biggest player.
\nIn other multi-channel news, I stumbled across Diva TV yesterday. What a very odd channel. From the name alone, it would seem to be aimed at an entirely different demographic to mine. But I stopped and watched. Why? Well take a look at Diva’s schedule for tomorrow:
\n0600 Picket Fences
\n0700 Yoga
\n0730 Yoga (Half an hour’s never enough)
\n0800 Kid’s Healthworks
\n0830 The Bold and the Beautiful
\n0900 The Bold and the Beautiful
\n0930 Style By Jury
\n1000 Hot Property
\n1030 Judge Hatchett
\n1100 The Bold and the Beautiful
\n1130 The Bold and the Beautiful
\n1200 The Oprah Winfrey Show
\n1300 Rachael Ray
\n1400 Picket Fences
\n1500 Yoga TV
\n1530 Style By Jury
\n1600 The Oprah Winfrey Show
\n1700 Kids Healthworks
\n1730 Rachael Ray
\n1830 The Independent Traveller’s Guide
\n1900 Hot Property
\n1930 Judge Hatchett
\n2000 Tease
\n2100 The Late Show With David Letterman
\n2200 Heroes’ Mountain (I think this must be a TV movie)
\n0000 Teleshopping (what’s wrong with the word “Closedown” any longer?)
\nNo prizes for guessing what stood out for me: there’s a channel carrying David Letterman in the UK once again. But what an odd place to find it. From the brief excerpt I saw, I haven’t been able to work out how up to date the episodes are. They’ve also got Oprah which seems like a sensible purchase since she gets some big names on her sofa. But the scheduling could do with re-jigging.
\nI’d put Letterman on at 11.00pm and bring forward their TV movie – there’s just too much competition at 9pm. Indeed, a late night – Sky+able repeat would be good. And I’d move Oprah back to 5pm and compete directly with whatever rubbish ITV’s running at that time, and Richard & Judy\/Paul O’Grady on C4. They’ve obviously decided to avoid that clash. An interesting channel launch, although I’ve seen precisely no marketing for this channel (perhaps it’s all in magazines that I don’t read).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a blaze of publicity (well, they’d bought the back pages of either one or both of the free London papers), Virgin 1 launched last night at 9pm. Virgin 1 (like most Virgin products – no relation to my employers), is partially Virgin Media’s response to the petty falling out between Virgin Media and Sky […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2080","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2080"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2080\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2080"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2080"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.adambowie.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2080"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}