Have Numbered Channels Had Their Day?

DT

DTV 27 February 2014 6:59pm

Jon, as far as people are concerned in Devon/Cornwall - the name of the broadcaster on the 'third button' has changed that many times they are losing count.

I still hear people call it Westcountry and ITV1. I've even heard some older people still call it Westward or TSW.

Renaming it ITV down here made no difference whatsoever as it never was in the first place. The vast majority aged 20-30 call it 'channel 3': which would please the muppet who came up with the idea to wreck the identity of the region I used to live in!

The whole past ITV thing happens all over the country here a lot of people who are 40 or older refer to it as Meridian and I know people in the North West who refer to it as Granada as those are just names that have stuck rather than ITV. Every channel has nicknames though I often refer to ITV3 as the Agatha Christie Channel

Someone in this thread mentioned More 4/E4/Film 4 as a reason why numbering doesn't work - I think the reason there might be that it would be pretty illogical to name a second Channel 4 Channel something like Channel 4 2 or Channel 5.

SW

Steve Williams 27 February 2014 8:18pm

Larry the Loafer posted:

Maybe they just don't want to be the first broadcaster to surpass five numeric channels?

Well of course we used to have Sky Moves 1-9, seemingly just to emphasise how many channels they had, but it was a bit unweildley to navigate. It makes more sense to brand them by genre, as they do now, because it helps viewers find what they want.

MD

mdtauk 27 February 2014 8:54pm

Steve Williams posted:

Larry the Loafer posted:

Maybe they just don't want to be the first broadcaster to surpass five numeric channels?

Well of course we used to have Sky Moves 1-9, seemingly just to emphasise how many channels they had, but it was a bit unweildley to navigate. It makes more sense to brand them by genre, as they do now, because it helps viewers find what they want.

Also they can schedule by genre with that setup, making it easier to find a film you may want to watch

AM

amosc100 27 February 2014 9:16pm

I was a bit quick fingered as I did mean FR2,3,4,5

But with RTL in The Netherlands, RTL5 is actually the 6th national channel behind Net5 at the channels follow as such:-

1. Ned 1
2. Ned 2
3. Ned 3
4. RTL4
5. RTL5
6. SBS6
7. RTL7 (which was originally called Yorin and before that was the 2nd incarnation of Veronica)
8. Veronica (3rd incarnation)
9. Net 5
10. RTL8 (which replaced Talpa/Tien)

whilst I slipped up with RTL6 as I meant RTL8 which replaced Talpa/Tien(10)

Nederland 1,2,3 are not commercial channels in thee true sense of the word, but do carry commercials and they are financed via a levy of €12/month (basic price for any of the forms of viewing TV in The Netherlands - which also includes Ned Digital Channels and Radio channels) - but you could say the same about BBC 1,2,3,4 (as BBC also have non-numbered channels such as CBBC, CBeebies, Parliament, News, Alba (part owned) as well as many radio channels). Lets not forget that Veronica (in its first incarnation) was one of the contributors/producers for the Nederland network.

Also fox Sports in The Netherlands do carry separate sports on separate channels - in a similar vein to what Sport1 did before they named the channels after the various sports they featured. (i.e. Sport 1.1, sport 1.2 etc etc etc but now sport1-Football, Sport1- Tennis etc etc etc).

(February 2014)