GOLD coming to Freeview?

I’d argue that channels such as ITV3 and Drama have taken more Pay TV value away from Gold, due to the fact the likes of these two offer repeats on a free to air basis. There is a duplication between the content on Gold and BritBox, for shows such as Only Fools and Horses, The Vicar of Dibley, but not everything, notably Mrs Browns Boys.

I used to watch Gold when I had Sky, but I ditched Sky for BT and I’ve not missed it, knowing that I can access those type of shows on BritBox ad-free eases things. It’s not the type of channel that’s worth paying for these days, but I’d certainly welcome a free to view move if it is the case.

I used to watch (UK) Gold for the older programming. Neighbours was one of them. I signed up for home lunches at school in 2001 as an excuse so i could watch repeats of Neighbours from 1994 at lunchtime.

Another thing to consider is this potentially helps beef up UKTV Play which has been a little thin on the ground with content from only three channels since the Discovery de-merger happened. Plus they've lost what I assume was their most streamed show in Taskmaster.

I don't know what the rights situation is but given that there are a number of old sitcoms on there that have appeared on Drama (and I think also happen to be on Britbox) then potentially the service can be filled with Gold sitcoms which could make the platform a more attractive free alternative to Britbox.

Hopefully this move sees them scale back on using Yesterday and Drama for comedy.

Strangely Taskmaster is still up on UKTV Play. With also regular airings on Dave? (But also All4 & E4..) so I wonder if Dave will hold onto repeat rights in the long term?

Possible I guess they could get repeat rights to the C4 episodes as well.

I just have had confirmation from UKTV that GOLD is NOT moving to free to air, here is their statement they sent to me this afternoon for clarification:

"Gold is not moving into Free to Air. Unfortunately Ofcom inadvertently published Dave’s license on its website. As Dave is a free to air channel this made it look like Gold was moving into Free. This is not the case and Ofcom have now corrected their website. We hope this clarifies the situation and thank you very much for your interest in UKTV’s channels."

That response doesn’t make any sense. Both the Dave licences would have already been on there and indeed the Gold licence is still on that page. My guess is that it is happening but UKTV aren’t ready to announce it yet.

Yes, too much detail to make a (possible) lie believeable. Just say OFCOM published the licence in error and leave it at that.

Some of the English in this is quite poor for a 'statement'. "Moving into Free to Air," "moving into Free." Not to mention the incorrect bit about it being removed from the Ofcom website. How did you receive this? Are you sure you haven't just made this up?

This is not made up, if you want to send me a private message, I will send you a copy of the full email to your own email address if you don't believe me.

The email address this reply was sent to me was Viewers@uktv.co.uk - so if you want to email them, and ask please do. I contacted them via their contact page on the UKTV website.

The entries in the site for Gold, Dave and Dave Ja Vu all have the same license number, so it does look like a cock up, GOLD should have a different one. But how that would happen, other than a clerical cut and paste error I can't think

It looks like all their licenses were updated in the 11th, but obviously it doesn't say what was updated - probably just an address or email address.


At one point I seem to remember that there was an odd structure whereby some of the UKTV channels were run by a company called UK Gold Services Ltd and some by UKTV New Ventures. So you'd get new productions on Dave credited as made for UK Gold Services. I could understand if that was a cause of confusion but the structure has been simplified now