History
Following the collapse of ITV Digital, the Independent Television Commission re-advertised the licences for the three multiplexes (MUX B, C and D) that had been used by ITV Digital. On 16 August 2002, the licences were granted to members of the Freeview consortium, with BBC getting multiplex B and Crown Castle getting multiplexes C and D.
Although all pay channels had been closed down on ITV Digital, many free-to-air channels continued broadcasting, including the five analogue channels, the BBC channels and ITV2, ITN News Channel, S4C2, TV Travel Shop and QVC.
Freeview launched on 30 October 2002. Sky Travel, UK History, Sky News, Sky Sports News, The Hits (now 4Music) and TMF (now Viva) were available from the start. BBC Four and the interactive BBC streams were moved to multiplex B. Under the initial plans, the two multiplexes operated by Crown Castle would carry eight channels altogether. The seventh stream became shared by UK Bright Ideas and Ftn which launched in February 2003. The eighth stream was left unused until April 2004 when the shopping channel Ideal World launched on Freeview. There are now 14 streams carried by the two multiplexes, with Multiplex C carrying 6 streams, and Multiplex D carrying 8. It has recently been announced that more streams are now available on the multiplexes, and that bidding is under way.
On 23 August 2010, Sky Sports News was removed from Freeview and replaced with Sky3 +1.
Read more about this topic: Freeview (UK)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)