| December
3, 2003
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Disney
Gives U.K. Digital-TV Service Freeview a Boost
LONDON -- Freeview,
a year-old service that delivers digital-television signals through
a regular rooftop aerial in the United Kingdom, is getting a boost from
Walt Disney Co., which plans to launch a general-interest channel on
the service in January, Wednesday's Wall Street Journal reported.
The decision by Disney -- a longtime
operator in European pay television with the Disney Channel -- to go
into advertising-supported television, which doesn't charge viewers
a subscription, was driven by Freeview's greater-than-expected success.
Daytime, as Disney's new channel will be called, will feature comedies,
made-for-TV movies and midday U.S. soap operas.
Freeview was launched in late
2002 by a consortium that includes the British Broadcasting Corp., British
Sky Broadcasting Group PLC and Crown Castle International Corp. , based
in Houston. The service, which is now in 2.1 million U.K. homes, feeds
30 television channels and 20 digital-radio channels through a set-top
box costing about 60 pounds ( $104) -- with no further fees. It has
proved attractive for "pay-TV refuseniks" who have balked at monthly
cable or satellite-TV fees, not to mention rooftop dishes that aren't
allowed in some areas of stringently zoned Britain.
Freeview's success throws another
complicated equation into the television mix in Britain, where the industry,
with an estimated $4.7 billion in advertising revenue this year, is
the world's third-largest in advertising terms after the U.S. and Japan.
The U.K. industry has long been dominated by the terrestrial, no-advertising
channels of the state-funded BBC and the commercial Channel 3. But BSkyB,
controlled by Rupert Murdoch, has made big inroads with its subscription
service, which has grown to include seven million of Britain's 22 million
TV homes.
Freeview emerged from the ashes
of the failed ITV Digital platform, an over- the-air subscription service
offered by Granada Media PLC and Carlton Communications PLC, which will
merge in February to become ITV PLC.
Dow
Jones Newswires
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