Thumbs up for Community TV
Freeview plans to add community television to its EPG -even though Foxtel has ignored a similar request.
- Published by David Knox
- on
- Filed under News
At last some good news for the Community Television sector, and it comes from Freeview no less.
Freeview has indicated it will add community television to its electronic program guide when it launches before the end of the year.
With plans for a universal grid, the EPG will put the sector on an equal footing with the other free-to-air networks.
It follows news that Foxtel had ignored a request from the Australian Community Television Alliance to be included on its EPG grid.
“ACTA received a letter from Freeview saying the directors voted unanimously to include community TV in the proprietary EPG,” said ACTA secretary Laurie Patton, who also heads Sydney’s community TV station, TVS.
“The community channels have offered this to Foxtel but, to date, Foxtel has not taken up the offer.”
Communications Minister Stephen Conroy at this month’s press conference to launch the Government’s campaign to get Australia ready for digital TV made murmurs of helping the community sector to make the switch.
“We don’t want them to close because of a lack of willingness to transition them into the digital world. We’re not going to leave them behind.”
Source: The Australian
8 Responses
The Channel 4 video EPG in Sydney has been stuck on 2:30am Thursday all weekend… lets hope Freeview in their own EPG actually have people monitoring the service and the govt. looks at the lack of care BA have for Ch4 and lets TVS go there.
The article says that community TV is analog but is going to be “helped” to transition to digital. Until then, however, it’s true that there’s little point in being in the guide.
Personally I hope whatever the government does merges with digital44 efforts.
Conroy has made noises about not leaving community TV behind in the digital switch, so we still have to wait and see. As always if you drill down into the source link there is extra detail. Adding to the Freeview EPG is certainly a positive in the community push when they haven’t had many lately.
Isn’t Aurora community TV that is already on Foxtel?
Absolutely. But local community channels such as 31 and TVS are not on their EPG. Maybe they should get together with Seven!
Yeah, does being added to the EPG = able to watch on freeview box???
an EPG for a channel that we can’t watch on digital? Gee, thanks Freeview!!
Maybe I’m not reading between the lines, but what is the point of adding community tv to the EPG when they aren’t going to be broadcast in digital? Are official freeview boxes going to support both analog and digital signals?