Shop your way to the TV set.
The latest in the never ending list of developments on digital terrestrial television (or Freeview if you must) is the arrival of a placeholder for one price-drop.tv, sister station to bid-up.tv.
Although price-drop.tv hasn't started broadcasting on the platform yet, and there has been no official confirmation of any launch of price-drop.tv, it hasn't stopped some sections of the internet mindlessly speculating on what will happen.
Mindless speculation isn't really my style, however the arrival of price-drop.tv on DTT would not be a major surprise. Founded by former indicated executives, bid-up.tv has been amazingly successful as an interesting article, From a monkey to a million from the MediaGuardian in February tells. In the space of two years, it overtook its competitors to become the second biggest shopping channel in the UK. That it should want to get it's latest venture in even more homes is therefore not surprising.
And unlike it's potential competitors, it knows it will pay its way. Free-to-air entertainment channels like FTN and the forthcoming channel from Disney will find their first few years a bit tough on the finances, but with a steady revenue stream coming in, the shopping channels have the big bucks needed to snap up some of the remaining slots left on the DTT platform.
It is however likely to be the last shopping channel on the platform - with forthcoming new channels from Disney, Setanta and Channel 4, there is just space for just one channel left. What that well be... well we can only do mindless speculation on that one...
