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New Freeview ad, but who cares about Community TV?

Freeview's new ad plugs shopping and branded channels but still nothing for Community Television.

2013-09-09_1240Freeview has launched a new television commercial, with a swing performance of “The Best Things in Life Are Free” performed by The Pearly Shells.

The ad combines clips from Free to Air networks and various personalities grooving along.

Freeview is plugging its “more than 18 channels” available for free.

The closing graphic denotes primary and multichannels plus regional broadcasters Southern Cross, Prime and NBN.

It also includes branding and shopping channels 4ME, Extra, Extra2, TVSN (whose clips appeared to be absent) but once again Community TV channels are nowhere to be seen.

A Freeview spokesperson told TV Tonight the community channels were not members of Freeview.

“While Freeview would very much like to support them on our EPG, unfortunately they do not have the technology and systems to be able to provide the required data to our EPG so that consumers can set reliable series recordings. The community channels are not-for-profit, and so are listed on the Freeview website because this is one way we can help support them,” they said.

ABC4Kids was also listed despite it airing as a programming block on ABC2.

“ABC4Kids is a TV service on a channel– a channel is not defined by running 24 hours a day (originally, all TV services went off air in the late evening). This is a modern use of the channel spectrum. The channel is for kids during the day and for another audience later in the day.”

11 Responses

  1. The reason CTV stations aren’t included in Freeview is indeed because they don’t have compatibility with the Freeview EPG products. And the reason for this is that Freeview charges a comparatively hefty fee to process the stations’ own EPG data and supply it back to them with the relevant Freeview series and program codes. The CTV stations, which all run on a tight budget, just can’t afford it. Mind you, does anyone use Freeview EPG functionality anyway?

    I agree with sillygostly: C31 always runs bang on time, and the networks could take more than a hint from their smaller compadres in this regard.

  2. WIN & the Community TV channels don’t contribute to Freeview, so they aren’t included in promotions (WIN did but pulled out about a year ago). No-one here should complain about *Free*view except the networks themselves because they’re the only ones paying for it.

  3. “While Freeview would very much like to support them on our EPG, unfortunately they do not have the technology and systems to be able to provide the required data to our EPG so that consumers can set reliable series recordings.”

    This made me chuckle, seeing as the commercial networks EPG data is totally unreliable.

  4. It should be “This is the best you’re gonna get for free”

    WIN’s GOLD channel is absent from the screenshot. I assume this channel has nothing to watch like the other datacasts, however with the fact that they do not even have EPG entries, its just a 12hr block called ‘Infotainment’ how could we know what’s on it?

    I don’t know about the other states, but Adelaide’s Channel 44 community station has terrible picture quality, worse than GO! or the datacast channels. The content is not much better either.

  5. I have always thought ABC2 and ABC4Kids as two seperate channels that happened to be on the same channel number (22), hence why ABC4Kids had their own logo.

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