Many people seem to be genuinely surprised at the success of the recently rebranded TV channel known as Dave. But how much of this success was due to an imaginative rebrand or was simply because it's now available on Freeview, which just on its own would account for many of the channel's new viewers?
It's arguable that UKTV G2 was the sort of name that could only be dreamt of by certain marketing personnel for whom UKTV G2 was the only answer to the question "What name shall we give a second channel along the lines of UKTV Gold?" - presumably when confronted with a statutory requirement to keep the UKTV brand element as part of a channel's name.
The name UKTV G2 alone suggests that it's some form of cheap secondary repeats channel hanging off the coat tails of UKTV Gold (many people still call that channel UK Gold anyway), which doesn't exactly standout in a sea of +1 channels in the Sky EPG. And the absence of UKTV Gold as a standard Freeview channel assisted the requirement for a rebrand.
A few people on various internet forums were moaning about 'Dave' being a poor name for a TV channel, but that was completely missing the point since these people were talking about the Dave channel as opposed to the likes of Discovery, Bravo or National Geographic, giving the new Dave channel word-of-mouth publicity that rival channels would die for.
Having said that, even if Dave had kept its UKTV G2 name on Freeview, it would have picked up a useful increase in viewers with its selection of popular repeats; it certainly helps that most of its programmes are either popular (Top Gear), not been repeated terrestrially in years (Whose Line Is It Anyway?) or were good but arguably underpromoted in the first place (QI).
Also some credit should be given to the Dave channel's imaginative and distinctive on-screen presentation which cleverly sidesteps its humble budget. The idents have a distinctive 'British' character that's also reflected in the rest of the presentation package, maintaining a theme whilst avoiding the 'one joke' trap that the UKTV Gold spacehopper-based idents fell into.
However UKTV will have to try and sustain interest in Dave once the bulk of its viewers have grown tired of watching the same repeats of QI, Mock The Week and Top Gear, etc., otherwise all that promotional work will have been wasted in the longer term.
