From Wednesday 30th March ITV3+1 returns to being on air between 18.00 - 00.00

http://www.a516digital.com/2016/03/c...-freeview.html

Is this staying on the same multiplex or moving do we think?

Surprised "technical improvements" haven't brought ITV3 on to the main 3/4 multiplex

A retune wouldn't be necessary if they weren't moving. I'd guess they're going back to SDN, with The Store reducing hours. I never understood why they moved in the first place.

...which means we can start speculating what will use the vacacted bandwidth on the Arqiva B/COM6 multiplex from 30th March...

If ITV leave this slot altogether, it will be the end of the ITV slot on Arqiva B (the old mux D) that's been around since 2005, when ITV and Channel 4 were leading the way in paying millions for the newly created fifth and sixth slots on Mux C and D. ITV has used this slot for Men&Motors, ITV Play, ITV2+1, ITV4 and now CITV/ITV3+1.

Indeed and I bet Arqiva will be gutted if that is the case, as they could see revenues really fall.

Of course ITV will get to reduce Freeview costs if they use their own space on the SDN multiplex and clearly don't want to spend loads if they are keeping the CITV limits on time and not aquring new space

It's not going to impact Arqiva like that, the cost of a Freeview slot has come down considerably since broadcasters were willing to pay £12 million in 2004/5, and of course since then the chunk of bandwidth the broadcasters have been paying for has been decreasing as more services are added to each multiplex. There appears to be a steady stream of broadcasters willing to pay for a slot - although clearly not of the type some forum members want - so for Arqiva it would be just a case of one paying customer replacing another.

If that happens, Hochanda will lose its slot... Will be interesting to see how different pieces of the jigsaw come together on Freeview in the coming fortnight...

How long do contracts last for? See it seems logical it could be 10yrs as that seems like the time frame here. If so, won't they be paying they higher contracted rate?

Like you say they there as customers who want the space even though it's quite pricey compared to other methods still. If we go DSO2 though, the increase in space could see many more channels launching and becoming more like a FreeSat system.

I would imagine some of the space created will be used to increase the number of HD channels, as this becomes the default way of delivery.

Carriage contracts vary - details don't come out in the public domain too often, but while some may be multi-year deals, others can be much more short-term, or have break clauses.

Remember that they need to find space for True Crime too. I don't think these things are connected though or they would all be happening on the same day.

Chances are the replacement will be One World or Kix (or a timeshare between the two of them).

Another UKTV service?

Good Food or Eden? Perhaps another music channel like VIVA on daytime hours.

Spike plus one is another possibility. Could also be more shopping or news.

Spoken to itv today itv3+1 and citv is going back how it was before citv is on 6am-6pm itv3+1 is on 6pm-12am the store is on 12.05am-4am

A thought struck me in the night.
Sony are planning to put Kix up on the LTV mux from April, but according to what I've heard elsewhere on the forum there isn't room to have it running at the same time as existing channels True Crime and POP. That's why True Movies had to slip over to GMAN when Crime began, and perhaps why Kix, already running programming on satellite, is just a still slide - albeit in video rather than MHEG - on DTT for the moment.
So perhaps Sony, who've already got Tiny Pop and other services on ARQA, are planning to book up the ARQB slot being vacated by ITV at the end of March and move something there from April, in turn freeing up bandwidth on Comux for Kix to go live? The simplest move would be a straight punt of POP to ARQB, but with various Sony channels currently spread across a number of the local and network muxes, other recombinations are possible...

This has now happened. The slot ITV have vacated has been taken over by QVC+1 (relinquishing their QVC+1HD reserved allocation!)

It's looks like itv are broadcasting citv twice on Freeview at present one of the broadcasts is listed after the radio channels

That's normal when a channel changes multiplex - the old version stays on at 79x, it will probably change to an MHEG with a retune message before being removed.

Yes, there is also a second version of ITV3+1 up there at present.

What confused me was someone said qvc+1 is using relinquished space from itv in this thread but surely that can't be the case if itv are using it to simulcast on two spaces on Freeview

QVC+1 is not on the air until 6pm, ITV3+1 is broadcasting an MHEG on both slots at the moment, after 6pm I guess the old one will stay as an MHEG.

Itv3 plus 1 is now broadcasting twice qvc plus one says it be back at 6am currently.

OK, we'll see what happens at 6am then (when CITV starts up again).

Speculation:

I think QVC+1 could be taking one or two early morning hours from QVC Beauty.

It may be co-incidental that QVC+1 appeared on the same day as the ITV changes.

Citv is still simulcast qvc+1 remained a caption at 6am in despite of what it says nothing happened.

Thanks, I suppose we'll have to wait to see if anything happens tomorrow.

Simulcasts end today and QVC+1 starts tomorrow according to a516digital.com.