European Equivalents of Legacy (ex-analogue) UK channels

The Dutch RTLs are all (well I assume they still are) licensed from Luxembourg. RTL became big by broadcasting commercial channels from Luxembourg to neighbouring countries whose laws prevented them from launching commercial channels, hence why RTLs exist in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands.

Luxembourg's so small and the local language is only spoken by a limited number of people so the single Luxembourgish RTL is all they need when supplemented by neighbouring channels. I vaguely remember a channel called Tango TV launching as a competitor (only because the Eurovision lot were hoping they could join the EBU) but that failed quite quickly.

I don't think Austria and German speaking Switzerland have that many of their own main channels because they're so well served by German channels. Austria has a private one called ATV, I'm not sure if Switzerland has any?

Austria also has one called Puls 4, a sister channel to ATV. Switzerland has quite a few, with the most notable being 3 Plus TV. Others include TV24 and S1.

FWIW, Channel 4 is a hybrid broadcaster in that the government owns it (hence it is a public broadcasting channel) but gets funded like ITV so in some way.

It’s a very interesting observation, and probably one that arises from smaller countries having had a need to develop pay-TV earlier to import channels from larger countries. In Ireland we had cable from the 1960s for this reason whereas in the UK it only really developed on a large scale in the 1990s. There was another thread where we discussed this recently. In many ways, for a long time, the Irish counterparts to BBC One, BBC Two, ITV and Channel 4 were, in fact, BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, and Channel 4 themselves, though that may no long really be the case particularly in ITV’s case, as it was pulled from virtually all cable systems when UTV Ireland launched. Alas UTV Ireland’s main crime was that it was it wasn’t ITV enough for some people and too ITV for others.

Re France, it’s the one of the only countries I think in the western world to privatise a major PSB (TF1) Also one of the few to have a terrestrial pay-TV broadcaster in the analogue era. I think we’ve said before about how breaking up ORTF seems to have been something they regretted ever since which is why France Televisions came about.

Didn't the recent switch from DVB-T SD 576i25 MPEG2 to DVB-T2 HD H.265 1080p50 broadcast also introduce a paywall on DVB-T2 in Germany for most of the commercial channels? The same thing happened years earlier for the 720p50 HD DSat versions of Sat1, Pro7 etc. when they launched, but the difference between terrestrial and satellite is that the SD FTA versions remained available on satellite, but the HD pay-tv versions replaced the SD FTA ones on terrestrial.

The old SD MPEG2 versions were FTA on DVB-T, and remain FTA on DVB-S, but the HD versions, now the only versions on terrestrial, are pay? (The SD versions were switch off on terrestrial when DVB-T was closed)

https://www.digitalbitrate.com/dtv.php?mux=ARD-BR&liste=2&live=18&lang=en

The green channels are FTA (Das Erste, ZDF etc.), the white channels are encrypted (Sat 1, Pro 7 etc.). The so-called 'Freenet' isn't actually free AIUI - it's just low cost (and requires a CI+ CAM and viewing card)

As for TV2 Denmark, I guess that's in a similar situation to where C4 was after the move away from ITV advertising levy funding, and before it became a full public service corporation (so in the interim period where it was more commercial than it is now?)

So Denmark may have a Channel 4 (and Channel 5) but not necessarily an ITV1?

What I know is that Austria gets the German RTL-branded channels (not sure about the ProSieben ones) but have the German ads replaced with Austrian ones. TF1 in Switzerland has Swiss ads in it.

What I am not sure of is if their programming line-up is identical to what is aired in those channels’ respective home countries.

Kind of - though TV2 is now a pay-TV channel (though quite low cost) in Denmark I think so it doesn't map fully to C4/C5 either. The only FTA mainstream services in Denmark are DR channels now I think.

In Austria we get all the German RTL-Group and ProSiebenSat1-Group channels, as they are FTA on Astra 19.2°. There are the German versions and the Austrian versions. Austrian versions have Austrian ads. On the ProSiebenSat1-channels some shows are substituted (News, morning show, ...).
ATV and PULS4 are native Austrian channels that were bought by ProSiebenSat1 after their start as independent channels.
The only independent nation-wide channel now is RedBull's ServusTV.
ServusTV did it the other way round and started a German version of its program a few years ago. Between the 2 ServusTVs the schedule varies a lot more than it does on the ProSiebenSat1-channels. They have own news-shows for Germany but also need to fill time with other content for Germany when it comes to sports and other stuff for which they only have rights for Austria. Therefor the Austrian version is encrypted on satellite, the German version is FTA

But programming-wise, RTL and ProSieben Austria are identical to their German counterparts?

I'd say a straight equivalency is impossible, although the role filled by ITV in the UK is mostly filled by TV2 in Denmark. You could try to break it down by different aspects:
Programming profile: Like ITV
Market position: Like ITV (but even stronger)
Exists to make money: Less than ITV but not as little as C4
PSB commitments: Hard to compare
Ownership structure: More like C4
History: Unique to TV2, but parallels can be drawn to both ITV and C4

TV2 being a pay channel doesn't really matter here, since there aren't really any free commercial channels in Denmark. The need to go pay TV arose from the fact ad breaks aren't allowed in Denmark, making it hard to run a free commercial channel. The last straw was when the EU decided that the portion of the license fee allotted to TV2 was illegal state aid and they had to pay back all the license fee money they received 1995-2004 (TV2 stopped receiving license fee payments in 2004). That placed the channel in immediate financial crisis and politicians were faced with either allowing ad breaks or changing the PSB commitments to allow TV2 to go pay.