More4 Info

Drag00n79

More4 launch plans announced; logo revealed

Channel 4 today has unveiled its new digital service More4, which launches on Monday 10th October. More4 will be a free-to-air digital channel for viewers that require a guarantee of entertaining, inspiring and intelligent documentary, news, drama, film and debate.

More4 will offer viewers at least one major original new drama or documentary a month, a host of exclusive commissions especially for the Channel, brand new daily live programmes and a second chance to see the very best of Channel 4 drama and factual.

Andy Duncan, CEO of More4: "The launch of More4 on 10th October this year will be amongst the most significant milestones in Channel 4’s history. For the first time since the launch of the original Channel 4 service in November 1982, we will be introducing a new public service channel for the benefit of British audiences.

No other commercially funded broadcaster in the UK would contemplate launching a channel of this scale and ambition. More4’s annual programme budget is similar to that of BBC 4 at launch, and well over half of that sum is committed to original UK dramas and documentaries, and a daily news service. This won’t be another digital repeats channel; More4 aims to make a significant public service contribution in its own right.

Available free-to-air on Sky Digital, Freeview and digital cable, More4 will extend Channel 4’s offering to multi-channel audiences, joining E4 and FilmFour as one of the highest profile channels in millions of digital TV homes.

Our ultimate aim is to ensure that Channel 4 is as relevant and as culturally influential in a post switchover world of hundreds of digital TV channels as it is now. That means maintaining our share of the TV audience in the face of fiercer and fiercer competition. A successful launch of More4 will be key to that."


Programming
More4 will broadcast a daily news show. Presented by Sarah Smith, More4 News will carry the most important news stories of the day, updated from Channel 4 News, and generate its own coverage of breaking news. The show will be half an hour long, from 8-8.30pm. There will also be a short summary just before 6pm.

The Last Word is a brand new daily topical talk show for More4. Airing Monday to Thursday at 11pm, The Last Word is hosted by a rotating line up of presenters who will be joined each day by an array of the brightest and best journalists, cultural commentators and comedians.

An exclusive show to More4 will be Animal Research (title to be confirmed). This feature length drama documentary explores one of the most controversial issues today – animal experimentation. Those trying to stop it have been named ‘quasi terrorists’ stopping at nothing to achieve their objectives. Those who are engaged in animal research do so under siege – if they haven’t been singled out already, they work in secret and under threat.

The sixth season of The West Wing will also be premiering on More4. The behind-the-scenes look at another year in the life of the eclectic group of frenzied staffers in the Oval Office stars Stockard Channing, Dulé Hill, Allison Janney, Joshua Malina, Janel Moloney, Richard Schiff, John Spencer, Bradley Whitford, and Martin Sheen as the President.

Also on the way on More4 will be movie premieres. Leading in the autumn with the UK TV premiere of Downfall, Oliver Hirschbiehel’s stunning, Oscar-nominated portrayal of life in Hitler’s bunker, as the allies advance through Berlin, with Bruno Ganz as the doomed dictator. Hirschbiehel shows Hitler as a human being, beset in turn by both doubt and then total confidence in the German people’s will to fight to the end. Hitler is surrounded by ‘yes-men’, including Albert Speer (Heino Ferch), Heinrich Himmler (Ulrich Noethen) and Joseph Goebbels (Ulrich Matthes) who, while assuring him of victory, are privately planning their own escape or destruction.

More4 will be screening the very best documentary films, a genre that has played to packed cinemas. Included in the autumn season are the free-to-view UK TV premieres of The Corporation and Capturing the Friedmans.

The Corporation is Mark Achbar and Jennifer Abbott’s dissection of the power of American business. Using graphics, wit and chilling interviews, they show how corporations exploit workers at home and abroad without any regard for the workers, the environment or the resources.

Capturing the Friedmans is Andrew Jarecki’s Oscar-nominated documentary about an all-American family torn apart by multiple counts of child molestation against the father and eldest son.

Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, the Sundance and Edinburgh award-winning film, sees him subsist for a whole month on McDonald's meals but broadens into a coruscating attack on the fast food industry laced with both wit and horror.

Touching the Void is Kevin MacDonald’s gripping BAFTA-winning drama-documentary for FilmFour, telling the story of Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, two mountaineers who survived an awful ordeal in the Peruvian Andes.

Michael Moore’s Cannes-winning Fahrenheit 9/11 is a scathing indictment of the US administration from Bush’s election, through the attack on the World Trade Center, to his invasion of Iraq.

Source: SkyDigi Online

Mossy Monk

FTA on Sky

this might be a good channel from Channel 4. i'm looking forward to this one

Drag00n79

Yes, it's the first new channel I am looking forward to on Sky Digital in a long time. Seems to be quality programming.

Dinner

Shamrok wrote:

Yes, it's the first new channel I am looking forward to on Sky Digital in a long time. Seems to be quality programming.

Erm. Just some confirmation for the idiot inside me. Will More4 appear by itself on sky or will I have to get a FTV card or something?

Mossy Monk

heres hoping not as Channel 4 themselves say it will be FTA and that doesnt require a card of any sort. hopefully it will bo on the Irish EPG for sky+ reasons though

Drag00n79

It's Free to Air so no card will be required to receive it — like the BBCs at the moment.

god's toy

FTA sounds real good to me! lol bet sky put up the price next year and try to blame it on more4!

djpaul

Any idea when test broadcasting will comence??

Mossy Monk

maybe 2 weeks before the launch?

del_boy85

It sounds good. Some quality programming.

dmeehan

does anyone know if it will be on the irish epg? where is it going to go on the epg, next to the E4's??

Mossy Monk

lord knows but it think it will be on the EPG. there is a slot after E4, but will it belong in the Entertainment section. perhaps it will be witht he Discoveries?

landser

what's the story with ntl digital. wil they be carrying it?

Mossy Monk

dont know, you'd need to contact them

Charles Slane

It's going to have a +1 channel from the get-go.