Virgin 1 goes 24 hours on Freeview

Well, we’ve seen a number of changes to the Freeview platform over the past few weeks.  I’ll provide an up to date EPG list on my Ident City blog shortly, but here on Viewpoint, I’ll catch you up on the recent changes that have taken place.

You know about Quest’s “non-arrival” on channel 47.  I posted on that earlier this week.  Suffice to say that at this time, the slide is still airing, and we still do not know when the channel will properly launch.

ITV4 is now on channel 24, broadcasting 24 hours a day.

Dave ja vu (I hate that name!) is now on channel 25.

Home (the new name for UKTV Style) is now on channel 26.  Frankly, these channel names that UKTV have come up with are really bad, and they do nothing in that sense to identify the channel.

ITV2+1 is now on Channel 27.

E4 and it’s timeshift station, E4+1 are on 28 and 29 respectively.

Fiver is on 30 with sister station Five USA on 31.

Smile TV is on channel 32 broadcasting between 3am and 7am. (why?  Seems pointless to me!)

Smile TV 2 has re-appeared on channel 33, broadcasting Babestation programmes between Midnight and 5am.

Setanta Sports 1 hasn’t moved,l they’re still on channel 34.

And new today is Virgin 1+1, which broadcasts between 6pm and 6am, using the old Virgin 1 multiplex space.

Go over to Ident City, and you will find a complete EPG list for Freeview. 

Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 21st October 2007

It's difficult to keep finding stories in the publically released ratings from BARB every week, but some of the numbers prove interesting, not just the ones I call the weekly Hall Of Shame either.

Last week, I said that we would see the first ratings for Dave. And we do. But unfortunately, we only have the share and reach ratings, no ratings for individual programmes. But we can see that Dave benefited from the usual pre-launch publicity, and the controversy surrounding the branding itself, to earn itself a 1.1 share / 23.7 weekly reach. Over 11 million viewers tuned into the channel sometime during its first week. Dave may have also benefited from being added to Freeview. Dave certainly did seem to take viewers from other Freeview broadcasters, but other channels may have also lost out to Dave as well. We'll know more after a few weeks worth of ratings.

Dave made it into the top 10 digital channels this week.

01. ITV2 - 1.8 / 32.2
02. Sky Sports 1 - 1.3 / 12.5
03. ITV3 - 1.2 / 14.7
04. CBeebies - 1.2 / 10.9
05. Dave - 1.1 / 23.7
06. BBC3 - 1.0 / 26.3
07. E4 - 1.0 / 20.0
08. Sky One 1.0 / 16.2
09. Film 4 - 0.9 / 14.8
10. ITV4 - 0.8 / 19.9

On though to the weekly Hall Of Shame, which welcomes some new entrants and a returning entrant this week. Once again, these results are listed in no particular order...

Sky Travel Shop - 35,000
Sky Arts - 111,000
Anime Central - 74,000
Business Channel - 69,000
Community Channel - 149,000
Discovery +1.5 - 133,000
Diva TV - 124,000
Fashion TV - 197,000
Film 24 - 133,000
Fox News - 183,000
Golf Channel UK - 166,000
Legal TV - 140,000
Life One - 86,000
MusFlash - 73,000
MUTV - 66,000
Overseas Propety - 104,000
Prime TV - 135,000
Real Estate TV - 138,000
Rockworld TV - 72,000
Setanta Golf - 113,000
Simply TV - 60,000
The Baby Channel - 5,000
The Travel Channel - 179,000
TWC Fight - 188,000
Wedding TV - 95,000
Wedding TV +1 - 110,000
Xleague.TV - 101,000

You gotta feel sorry for The Baby Channel. First week as the lowest rated channel, and you seriously couldn't get a lower rated week. Just 5,000 viewers across the entire 7 day period. That means almost all of the schedule, was zero rated.

And we welcome Fox News Channel to the Hall Of Shame with their lowest ratings ever in the UK. We also welcome Discovery Channel +1.5 to the Hall Of Shame too. It seems that as far as timeshift channels go, +1.5 hours doesn't seem to work too well.

Ratings Review: BARB Week Ending 14th October 2007

Well, the main story in the ratings this week, seems to be one of recovery for Sky One. For the second time in three weeks, the channel has increased its share of viewing, this time going up to 1.2 share / 16.9 weekly reach, which equates to a total of just over 8 million viewers over the course of the week. Despite that, that is still about half a million less viewers than Sky Three, despite it having a lower share (0.7 / 18.0).

However, on the positive side for Sky One is the fact that despite the fact that The Simpsons still had 6 of the Top 10 highest rated programmes, the Top 5 were not dominated by any one show. Noel Edmonds' new quiz show for Sky One, Are You Smarter Than A 10 Year Old? has for the second week in a row come in at Number 2 in the top 10, with an audience over 600,000. Add to that episodes of Ross Kemp On Gangs, Stargate Atlantis and Prison Break all scoring over the half a million mark, and you'll see that Sky One has an improving stable of programmes. There's still work to be done, but there is a good foundation forming.

It's unfortunate that a lot of the news channels ratings information is not made publically available. In terms of share of viewing and weekly reach, we have ratings for Sky News, BBC News 24 and Fox News, but for individual programmes, only data for Sky News is publically available. For Sky News, their top rated bulletin was a Sunday edition of Sky News at Seven, which just made it over the 100,000 mark! Just out of interest, I wonder just how low the ratings are for Fox News Channel over here. I know they reached only 216,000 viewers this week, but I wonder how that pans out for individual shows. It's kinda disappointing that BBC News 24 don't have their indivdual show ratings released. I'd love to do what Inside Cable News and TV Newser do for US cable news channels and release the hour by hour comparison for primetime. That would be truly interesting information. Unfortunately, I think I'd have to be a subscriber to get that info, and that means paying thousands of pounds a year to get it.

There's a whole load of news channels that do not subscribe to BARB and therefore do not have ratings information collected for them by BARB. CNNI, CNBC Europe, Bloomberg UK, EuroNews, France 24, Al Jazeera English, NDTV 24x7 and others do not appear on the list of channels in the BARB ratings list, so unfortunately, we have no idea just how many people watch those channels at all.

Onto the timeshift channels, and let's list the Top 5 again.

E4 +1 - 0.6 / 13.6
Channel 4 +1 - 0.5 / 14.5
ITV2 +1 - 0.4 / 9.5
Living TV+1 - 0.4 / 8.0
UKTV Gold +1 - 0.3 / 9.1

Next, to the weekly Hall Of Shame...

Sky Travel Shop - 73,000
Anime Central - 88,000
Business Channel - 40,000
Community Channel - 108,000
Diva TV - 156,000
Fashion TV - 169,000
Golf Channel UK - 99,000
Legal TV - 121,000
LIfe One - 121,000
MusFlash - 60,000
MUTV - 74,000
Overseas Property TV - 41,000
Performance Channel - 195,000
Real Estate TV - 128,000
Rockworld TV - 41,000
Setanta Golf - 134,000
Simply TV - 40,000
The Baby Channel - 28,000
The Travel Channel - 191,000
The Travel Channel +1 - 180,000
Wedding TV - 161,000
Wedding TV +1 - 128,000
Xleague.TV - 96,000

And finally for this week's ratings, a heads up for next week, when we get the first set of ratings for Dave, the rebranded UKTV G2. The final week's ratings for G2 looked like this. 0.5 share / 11.9 weekly reach, which equates to over 5.6 million viewers. The timeshift version had a 0.1 / 2.6, which equated to just over 1.25 million viewers. Their last week's top 10 programmes looked like this...

1	TOP GEAR (Thu 2001)	190
2	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2220)	185
3	QI (Mon 2100)	177
4	TOP GEAR (Tue 2000)	169
5	DRAGONS' DEN (Thu 2100)	150
6	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2140)	148
7	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sun 2300)	143
8	BILLY CONNOLLY'S WORLD TOUR OF (Sat 2220)	137
9	THE CATHERINE TATE SHOW (Fri 2100)	131
10	TOP GEAR (Tue 1900)	116

So, just how much better or worse will Dave do? Answers next week...