Originally Posted by russellelly:
“Hear hear. Even the early days of Freeview, the 30 or so channels available had a fairly diverse range of programming (More4 took late night US comedy in prime time and some high-quality documentaries, ABC1 had scripted US shows which had never been shown in the UK, E4 seemed to have a much bigger range of scripted imports than now). There were channels dedicated to genres (history, music, sports news) that aren't served in the same way today, at least FTA.
Broadcast TV has more competition than ever for people's attention, it will slowly die out if it doesn't give new generations a reason to watch. I fear it's failing.
(Sorry, not really ratings related, but that post struck a chord).”
I'm glad you mentioned ABC1. That era of Freeview was the best. It truly felt like the platform was progressing and the digital switchover was taking us somewhere worthwhile. OK so ABC1 wasn't perfect and deteriorated towards the end when Disney couldn't secure a 24 hour slot but it knew what it wanted to be, had very strong branding and actually had a proper schedule through the day, instead of just screenings its most popular shows like Scrubs several times a day.
Now they are playing for bigger audiences FTA channels are nearly all completely ratings driven and the art of scheduling has been lost. They will simply look at which programmes - normally imports - work best, and they end up dominating the channel they are on, with not much of note going on around a few established hits. There are exceptions of course but generally that's how it goes.
Meanwhile pay channels are becoming increasingly niche and have lost their identity. As I said yesterday Discovery is pitched at petrolheads almost exclusively in the evenings, History channel barely shows any history, MTV has fallen out of love with music and is now focussed on young-skewing reality, etc etc. When you compare with what these channels used to be like in yesteryear, the present day's offerings are an embarrassment. Again there are exceptions, and the likes of Sky 1 and Sky Atlantic are still worth having, but not many.
And when new channels appear FTA nowadays, it's more about having a presence when rival companies have one and keeping up with the competition, rather than genuinely wanting to serve a FTA audience, and so little effort goes into the content and we end up with half a dozen channels showing cheap US factual on loop.
It's a depressing situation but unfortunately I don't see a positive way forward unless they ultimately switch off the standard definition channels on Freeview and replace with fewer channels, all in HD. It is too easy to secure a slot on Freeview nowadays, but it's very much a case of quantity over quality.
