Freeview is celebrating its seventh birthday today.
The service launched on the 30th of October 2002 as a joint venture between the BBC, Crown Castle and BSkyB. Freeview offered free-to-view TV after the collapse of ITVDigital, and OnDigital before that.
Greg Dyke, then Director-General of the BBC, said: “Today is an important day in the development of British television with the launch of Freeview – a new digital platform which means that 75% of homes in Britain will now be able to receive digital television completely free. It’s also a big step forward for the BBC, making all of the BBC’s digital television, interactive and radio services available to many more people at no extra cost.”
The last seven years have been a bumpy journey, but Freeview is now in many homes, and most new TVs and recorders come with built-in Freeview. We now have a bunch of new channels (admittedly, many of them shopping or adult chat channels), and with parts of the UK now going through the Digital Switchover (including North Wales this week), signal strengths are set to increase, bringing Freeview to more homes. The future is still looking good for Freeview.
We should, however, take a moment to remember those valiant TV channels that are no longer with us on our journey. raise a cup of tea to salute Sky Travel, UK Homestyle, FTN, BBC Choice, ABC1, Nuts TV, Men and Motors, ITN and UK History, as well as radio stations including oneword and MoJo that couldn’t be here today to celebrate.
Happy Birthday Freeview from all at your favourite Digital TV podcast!