Media Guardian: Broadcasters get green light for more pay-TV
There's much regulation in the TV market in the UK - indeed tight regulation made the UK TV market what it is today. However you sometimes have to ask, is there regulation for regulations sake? That's the question Ofcom has been asking itself.
One of the ones under its radar was the compulsion to broadcast only free to air channels on multiplexes B, C and D on digital terrestrial television - what most people know as Freeview.
For those who don't know, a multiplex is a group of channels bundled together and broadcast in the same space that a single analogue channel would have been broadcast on. And when the BBC and Crown Castle (now National Grid Wireless) won their licenses in 2002, they won with a proposal to only broadcast free to air channels - what became known as Freeview. The ITC dutifully put that remit into their license and all were happy. Pay TV was still allowed elsewhere, but no one at the time wanted to do it.
Of course things have changed. Freeview has been a roaring success and a small pay TV service was started called Top Up TV.
With the success of free to air television, Ofcom has decided that the restriction to broadcast only free to air television on multiplexes B, C and D should be removed. It's an obvious move forward. Or somet.
But will it actually change anything? Are we going to see a raft of free to air channels suddenly change to pay TV because they now can? Well clearly not.
For starters you only have to look at the channels hosted on those multiplexes.
On mux B, it's the BBC - they don't sell any of their space to other broadcasters - including their own commercial subsidiaries like UKTV. So no pay TV there.
On mux C and D, National Grid Wireless has a plethora of channels.
There's three Sky channels - Sky News, Sky Sports News and Sky Three - none of which are exactly premium content. As an organisation, it funds the development of Freeview, and has shown almost no interest in being part of the Top Up TV platform.
Then there's UKTV History and UKTV BrightIdeas - both part of the UKTV empire and co-owned by BBC Worldwide. Some UKTV channels are of course part of Top Up TV already, but UKTV History in particular has very healthy ratings, no doubt helped by being free. As for UKTV BrightIdeas - well it's a handy barker channel for the UKTV Style family if nothing else.
ITV and Channel 4 also have three slots between them - both again members of the Freeview consortium, and both broadcasters who have moved their digital channels from subscription to free. Chance of going back to pay? Very low indeed.
Which leaves FTN (owned by Flextech) and the two music channels - MTV owned TMF and Emap's The Hits.
For the latter two, you only have to look at Top Up TV's relatively tiny reach (Freeview homes are around 12 million, Top Up TV is estimated to have just a quarter of a million subscribers) to see that free to air is probably more likely.
FTN is perhaps the wildcard. Never a particularly big ratings winner, it's increasingly using teleshopping and quiz formats rather than programming. Flextech could go either way - it may decide the quiz route is best, or it could give up on FTN and offer Living TV to Top Up instead.
Of course that all assumes new slots won't be created - although how much more the broadcasters can reduce picture quality to cram more in is another question entirely. But can Top Up TV afford to pay around £12m a year for another slot if it came up? It would be a risky business. As for any other broadcaster - well it would have to be very sure of its financial models to take on such a commitment.
So will Ofcom's regulation changes actually change anything? It's move does seem to be counter the way most broadcasters are moving. It is unlikely to have any real repercussionss on what we watch. So you could ask another question - whilst removing unnecessary regulation is no doubt good, is it worth the cost to remove regulation that once removed, won't actually do anything?
