Film4 FTV or FTA on July 23...

Icehouse

Due to the usual clarity of reporting, I'd guess FTV....

Channel hopping
Film4 relaunches as a free channel on July 23, offering a selection of movies to a wide audience, a move it hopes will pay off in the long run

Owen Gibson
Monday July 3, 2006

Guardian

Film 4's big opening night premiere, the Oscar-winning Lost in Translation, may have one of the most ambiguous endings in recent film history, but the broadcaster is hoping for a more traditionally Hollywood conclusion to its plans to launch a free movie channel.
The move is just one small ramification of a series of shifts in the way that movies are made, distributed and shown that are collectively shaking Hollywood studios to their foundations. The growth in online DVD rental, the promise of on-demand downloads, digital piracy and concern over studios' ability to retain control of the rigid distribution system have left the industry in a state of flux.

Following last year's decision to make E4 available free to air and launch More4 in the same vein, the film channel will follow suit on July 23, backed by an expansive marketing push. Channel 4 and the film industry have long been intertwined. "If you ask people in the street about Channel 4, its association with film-making - its Trainspottingness - comes quite high up the list," says Kevin Lygo, Channel 4's exuberant director of television.

As a producer, it had a remarkable run in the mid-1990s with films such as Trainspotting, Four Weddings and a Funeral and Secrets & Lies. But it then over-reached itself and the chief executive Mark Thompson shut down the separate film unit. Reintegrated into the main Channel 4 structure under drama chief Tessa Ross, it is again quietly producing the sort of low budget hits that originally made its name.

Meanwhile, the Film Four subscription film channel was meandering along. With about 300,000 film buffs paying £7 a month for a diet of highbrow classics, Brit flicks and art-house movies it was finally making a modest profit but, says Lygo, "it was never going to grow". Given the decision to take the broadcaster's other channels free, it was decided to make the channel more mainstream and, overnight, make it available in 18m homes.

"In a public service sense, the thinking is - let's get it out there to as many people as possible. We're obliged and inclined to promote digital switchover. Freeview is obviously the platform to be on. So, bang," says Lygo.

For Freeview homes in particular, the new Film4 service (the word is changing to a numeral to match E4 and More4) will be a big draw. The launch schedule mixes credible Hollywood hits such as Zoolander, Lost in Translation and The Shawshank Redemption with the mainstream end of arthouse cinema, British movies like Elizabeth and Festival and classics such as Apocalypse Now and Chariots of Fire. International and arthouse films will tend to be relegated to late-night slots.

Lygo is reluctant to accept the dumbing down charge, preferring instead to describe the line-up as "some films you know, some films you don't know". And while pay-TV customers are super-served with film channels, he believes Film4 should be able to exploit its "editor of choice" role, together with the ability to cross-promote on the three other channels, to curry favour with viewers looking for a guide through the proliferation of movies available on television and on-demand.

"Although there are many movie channels, they don't welcome me in particular. I don't see the difference between Sky Movies 1 and Sky Movies 10," says Lygo. "With film, we've got such a passionate association and it's quite interesting the way we handle our new channels. We call them a name rather than a number, we give them a channel controller who loves them and nurtures them."

Just as Lygo brought rigour to the scheduling on the main channel so that viewers would know what to expect on any given night, so Film4 has a very regimented schedule with a big movie at 9pm every night, a contemporary horror film on Saturdays, and regular strands and themes across the week. There will be six films a day, starting at two-hour intervals.

"Rather like the channel itself, you have to have big popular things on it to call people in, in order to say 'while you're here, here's something else we'd like you to see'."

At a time when all talk is of an advertising downturn, it might seem perverse to be launching so many ad-funded channels. But Channel 4 chief executive Andy Duncan is seeking to use a window of opportunity while still bringing in big profits in order to maximise the channel's viewing share on television, as well as launching complementary paid-for video-on-demand services. While Sky took a hefty chunk of the profits for the subscription channels, on-demand downloads are far more cost-effective.

"The economics mean it isn't going to cost us money," says Lygo. "I would hope that we're into operating profit in the second year. It's a proper use of our market power in that if you were trying to run this film channel from scratch you couldn't do it on the kind of money we can do it on." The films will be interrupted by adverts for the first time, but Lygo is confident viewers will accept that as a price worth paying for free movies.

And in terms of production, Lygo says that Channel 4 is clearer about its role than it has been for a long time. A welcome side effect is the way in which the ability to offer a feature film acts as a talent magnet and allows the broadcaster to grow.

As ITV and Five knew that Channel 4 was planning this move, he expresses surprise that they did not try to get in first or make more of an effort to gazump it during the recent round of bidding for movie packages from the big Hollywood studios.

"Some packages came up, we wanted them and we bought them. We paid the market price. You buy them for three or four years and then they're locked up. I suspect the competitors were a bit miffed," he says. "It's better to play a good film several times than play some old crap film. We've got lots of long runs over a number of years."

Insiders at Sky, the traditional home for movies on TV, profess to be unconcerned. They stick to the line that their customers are so locked in to the "breadth and depth" of its offer as well as technological innovations such as Sky Plus that they are unlikely to abandon it. It might just make those thinking about trading up from Freeview think twice, though. Meanwhile, the more attractive channels Channel 4 takes free, the more it impacts on a beleaguered ITV as the advertising cake is sliced more thinly. Increasingly, says Lygo, broadcasters have to think in terms of their suite of channels and if Film4 is a success, we can expect at least one more new channel launch.

MediaGuardian.co.uk © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2006

DMC

Given the ambiguous launch of more4, I for one will wait and see what they do.

Ronan|Raven

Isnt it going to be just on Freeview with it remaining encrypted on Sat.

mjsmyth

Woohooo, another Film4 thread

Worst case scenario is it is unencrypted on freeview and encrypted so that it is only viewable thru a skybox using a Freesat from Sky card, like Sky 3, Ch4 and Ch5.

Best case is that it is unencrypted just like BBC and ITV.

It would be nice to have another movie channel, there is after all only so many decent movies movies4men or horror zone or bonanza (anyone see the abbot & costelloe movie on Sunday?) can show. Hmmm... on second thoughts, maybe not decent, but watchable.

MJ

Charles Slane

They can call it "free-to-air" on satellite until the cows come home but I won't believe it until I see it. The print and on-line media don't seem to have a clue that there's a difference between free-to-air and free-to-view.

Foggy43

Sky are still taking subscriptions for Film4. I thought with less than a month to go this would stop or some information would be available saying if the channel would be free to view on Sky.

Freeview the UK's Terrestrial Digital provider have had the free to view from July 23 info up for sometime now on Channel 31.

As Charles said 'believe it when you see it'

neilc

Check out this link.

Neil

Pal

Quote from Channel4 website

On digital satellite, the FilmFour Channel will be available to freesat viewers as well as Sky digital subscribers.

Mossy Monk

there it is then

Channel 4's FTA on satellite is yet again FTV

byte

Even so, a good addition to the FTV boxes. It may make an FTV card and digibox slightly more appealing perhaps now, than just a FTA box.

Charles Slane

There's a test on 12.480 V, labelled as "12010" showing Film Four Weekly. It's FTA, although it's odd that it's showing Film Four Weekly since that's the channel that will be closing.

Still, it's promising...