I imagine the DOG will be the same as Yesterdays, a letter on top with the full name underneath. I imagine all the UKTV channels will eventually re-brand this way.

That's exactly how it is. The D is very prominent, it remains to be seen how irritating it will be.

YESTERDAY were showing old episodes of "Keeping Up Appearances" last night. They must really be struggling for content.

No doubt this is the sort of show which will end up on Drama now. Which begs the question, if Yesterday are short of content then how are they going to fill their schedules?

There are only so many WW2 documentaries out there.

I think you will find it will be more of the period costume drama type as per my post #49.
Keeping Up Appearances has been on Yesterday weekdays for a couple of weeks now.

What does yesterday really stand for? programmes that are 10 years old?

Yesterday came out of the UKTV rebrand and may, once UKTV Drama is up and running, turn back to more history content.

Of course each of the company's channels on freeview need to appeal to wide cross section of people so putting shows on like Summer Wine etc. can draw in viewers plus some of their documentaries are rather watchable. I wish they would dig through some of the BBC things like Micheal Woods search for Troy etc. as for it's time the show was cutting edge and even now is watchable.

I must admit until Drama goes live we won't really know if this will cause an improvement across the board or just give everyone another reason to beg UKTV to not repeat the same show ten times in 12 months.

I've noticed even Keeping Up Appearances is on Yesterday as well. I like the Sounds of the 60's programmes they show.

Keeping Up Appearances appeared suddenly a few days after they had begun a re-run of The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, which I was watching. For some reason this was pulled after about four episodes and the printed TV guides were out of date for the next week.

If fact it was pulled after 6 of the 7 episodes of the series (I still have all 6 on my PVR). If you were quick you may have seen episode 1 of series 2 on the schedule but that was pulled also.

Yesterday was best when it focused on documentaries like "Monarchy" and "World at War"

Then around 2010 they started showing historical fictional drama like Colditz and Secret Army which was great too as these excellent shows had been ignored by the other channels.

But when it comes to the likes of Keeping Up Appearances, Lovejoy, Reginald Perrin and Last of The Summer Wine then the whole channel becomes a bit of an enigma. It appears to have lost its way somewhat, perhaps through lack of quality content or funding.

I would love to see repeats of the old BBC Timewatch documentary specials on Yesterday and leave the light-hearted comedy shows to the new UK Drama channel.

Although I enjoy some of the stuff Yesterday is showing, I tend to agree that it isn't really quite the right place and would prefer a more factual historical channel. There's also a wealth of political stuff such as numerous Michael Cockerell documentaries about political giants of the 20th Century which I think would be appropriate for a channel such as Yesterday. In the same vein,.there was a seies of interviews done in the 70s and 80s with former senior politicians which I think were called something like "The 20th Century Remembered", which don't ever seem to be shown now, but surely contain many fascinating observations by political figures now all gone

Comedy doesn't really fit well into the Drama genre, I would have thought that they would keep the comedy shows on Yesterday and Dave.

I think part of the problem might be that UKTV want to show these old comedies on Freeview, and only Yesterday fits the required demographic. That's the problem with having genre-based TV channels, whereas something like Dave which has an ambiguous enough name to not be genre-based and merely aimed at a specific demographic, has more flexibility to show a variety of different types of programmes.

(just for the record, I don't particulary agree with aiming channels at specific demographics either, but in UKTV's case it makes a bit more sense due to the sheer amount of programming they have access to, and the limited amount of channels they have on Freeview)


I'm not sure Drama is the right place for them either! They are sitcoms, not comedy dramas, and out of the Freeview channels UKTV have, Yesterday probably is the best fit. What it actually shows is that UKTV probably need to launch GOLD on Freeview, as these shows must be doing pretty well for them for them to replace some of the history aspects of what is supposed to be a history channel.

edit actually, I just realised that UKTV probably are, to some extent, repositioning their Freeview channels to cover certain demographics:
Dave - younger male viewers
Really - younger(?) female viewers
Yesterday - older male(?) viewers
Drama - older female(?) viewers

Officially, Really covers "a broad audience of 25-44 year old adults", according to the press release associated with the recent rebrand.

this could actually work out... i remember an old Sky Soap? which used to show old drama stuff, soaps etc it does have an audience cos why would they launch it? this could be the relaunched version?

UKTV done their market research and this new channel will be aimed at wealthier adults of both genders:

Drama’s target audience is ABC1 adults and the on-air and off-air creative for the channel includes a dynamic logo and complimentary idents created by design agency DixonBaxi.
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2013/...a-on-freeview/

I read somewhere that this new channel would also be on satellite (presumably as part of one of Sky's entertainment packs) and it'll be interesting to see if it replaces the dire Blighty which has such poor viewer ratings.

I have no doubt that UKTV Drama will be a ratings success.

It won't be replacing Blighty, they've stated that Drama will be their eleventh channel in the family. It is surprising they haven't done anything to improve Blighty, I really did think it would be the next channel to come to Freeview.

Agreed though there is in my view anyway I a lot of content that could be put on Blighty! I sware UKTV People was better than Blighty! Maybe if they decide to launch another channel on freeview it will be a BETTER Blighty!

They may be just seeing what different mix of content get what viewing figures........ After all that is what it is all about.
They could just be exploring their audience viewing figures response.

what number is this on?

On http://network.uktv.co.uk/ it dos show the yesterday Y in a circle so no don't think so!

Unless my watch has stopped (it hasn't), we haven't reached the 8th of July yet. Ergo it's not on any number at this time.

I am ever so grateful that UKTV did not decide to inflict Blighty on Freeview viewers and Drama will no doubt be a much better channel when it arrives next month. Blighty's logo really ought to be a yellow lemon because that channel has such dire ratings (BBC Parliament has about 5x more viewers! ) and I am surprised that UKTV are keeping it.

Blighty is a niche channel in the documentary genre, it's possible that UKTV wish to keep a presence in that genre. I would agree that they could widen the scope of the channel somewhat, maybe beefing up the documentary and reducing lifestyle content. As it stands the channel doesn't seem to have a real target audience.

I'm sure it will get an improvement at some point UKTV seem to go through the channels 1 by 1 and play about with them, just Blighty is way overdue an update, like a new name and new content!

Ever since it was rebranded to Blighty I thought it was always too narrow a scope for the channel without it showing very similar content to yesterday! Take it back to UKTV People and beef it up a bit!