Author: Scott

ABS Broadcast Ensures High Street TV Continues

ABS Broadcast stepped in to ensure High Street TV continued broadcasting. During the Covid-19 lockdown, High Street TV’s previous playout provider was no longer able to continue offering it services.

ABS Broadcast ran the High Street TV channels on their behalf, to ensure a smooth transition from the previous provider. The migration process took 30 days from start to finish.

The work took place during full lockdown, with many challenges, including inaccessible third-party buildings and data centres. Despite this, the migration was successful, with no service outages for High Street TV.

High Street TV operate five 24 hour shopping channels on Sky, consisting of the main channel, plus 4 time-shift versions. They also advertise on other channels including ITV and Channel 4, and also supply several high profile retailers.

ABS Broadcast are based in London and provide channel origination and distribution services to several global niche television brands.

Merit Ownership Change

It is being reported that the recently launched Merit has had its license transferred from ITV to Sky.

Under Freeview rules, channel operators cannot transfer or sell channel numbers. It appears that to get around this, ITV have created Merit in order to transfer the channel number to Sky.

Sky are planning on launching Sky Arts as a free to air channel, and Merit’s channel number could be used for the new Freeview version of the channel, possibly being combined within the bandwidth currently used by Sky owned challenge.

At this time, any potential development is simply speculation. Another scenario, given that Merit has focused on food, home, and gardening programmes, is that Sky may be planning on launching their own food or home related channel. Merit could end up forming the basis of this.

Although Merit launched on Freeview only, the channel has been broadcasting on satellite using CITV downtime, although did not join the Sky or Freesat EPG.

There are likely to be more developments in the Merit story.

Update: 23/08/2020. I’ve since learnt that Sky Arts is to take channel number 11, meaning Sky Pick would take 34 as this would be the highest Sky owned channel number. It is still unclear what will happen to Challenge.

Ireland: Virgin Pulls Channels From eir Sport

A dispute between Irish broadcaster eir and Virgin Media has seen Virgin pull Virgin Media Sport and Sport Extra from eir Sport at very short notice.

The row surrounds the non payment of license fees to Virgin Media who own the rights to show Champions League games on Irish television.

Virgin Media want the full amount owed under the contract, but eir are only willing to pay for games that actually take place.

Another Sky Rebrand

Sky Two is expected to re-brand on the 3rd September (2020) to Sky Replay. It is unclear what, if any programme changes will be made, but it would appear the channel will be used for repeats of programmes on other Sky owned channels.

Sky Two is currently available on Sky’s satellite platform, and Virgin Media’s cable platform, and is expected to continue on both platforms.

Sky Sports to Launch NFL Channel

Sky and American sports league NFL have agree a new five year rights deal, which will see a new dedicated channel launch.

Sky Sports NFL will launch on 3rd September ahead of the 2020 season, on channel 407 of the Sky satellite platform. The service will be available to viewers in both the UK and Republic of Ireland.

The new agreement marks the 25th anniversary of live NFL coverage on Sky.

UK Launch for Fox News International

Fox News International will launch in the UK on the 17th September (2020), and is a new live streaming service of Fox News Channel and Fox Business for international viewers.

The service will be available on iPhone, Android/Android TV, and Apple TV from launch with Amazon Fire TV and Roku to be added at a later date.

There is a charge for the service, but the UK price has not been confirmed.

Viewer Difficulties Following Re-tune

Following the Freeview re-tune event on 12th August (2020), as part of the clearance of frequencies for 5G mobile networks, the BBC is reporting that some viewers have hit difficulties.

Despite re-tuning, some viewers have been unable to restore all channels. The exact number of viewers affected is not available, but has been described as ‘many’. The areas and channels affected are also unknown.

Freeview, who oversee the terrestrial TV network in the UK, has said that anybody experiencing issues should contact them. The problem causing the issues is unknown.

Increase in iPlayer Demand

BBC’s iPlayer catch up and streaming service saw an increase in demand, with a record breaking number of viewers.

During January to June, 3.1 billion requests to stream programmes were made, an increase of 47% when compared with the same period the previous year.

April to June of this year saw 1.6 billion requests, marking a new best ever quarter. This is an increase of 59% compared to the same period in 2019.

iPlayer viewing had already increased prior to lockdown, with the first quarter (January to March 2020) seeing an increase of 34% compared to the same quarter in 2019.

Ofcom Reports Major Increase in Screen Time

Media regulator Ofcom is reporting a significant increase in the amount of time spent watching TV. During April 2020, viewers spent an average of six hours and 25 minutes watching TV, an increase of 31% compared to last year.

Subscription streaming services saw an even larger increase, more than doubling to 1 hour 11 minutes in April 2020 each day, compared to 34 minutes the previous year.

It has also been reported that an estimated 12 million adults in the UK signed up to a new subscription streaming service during lockdown. 3 million of these had never used such a service before.

More statistics can be found in Ofcom’s Media Nations 2020 report.