Prospects for new channels in the UK

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By 2007 there could be around 600-700 channels available on sky digital, according to Mike Chandler, managing director, Astra Marketing UK, which markets the Astra satellite platform operated by SES.

Speaking alongside Chandler on a panel of transmission experts at the So You Want To Start Broadcasting? conference in London on 23 January, Kingston Inmedia’s head of broadcast, John Dunlop, said that channel launches on the Sky platform were set to continue at a rate of around 80 per year for the next few years, 60 of which will slip into new slots on the EPG with the remaining 20 replacing channels which will close down.

However, the platform could face a ceiling because of capacity limits on the Astra system if the rate of channel launches exceeds that.

sky digital had a total of 419 channels at year-end 2003, 67 of which were radio stations.

There is currently space available for new channels and with bit rates falling all the time – today a channel operates at around 2mbps as opposed to 4mbps, as it has been in recent times – less space is needed per channel. The panel also suggested that new compression techniques will shrink this further. Additional capacity will become available if SES-Astra’s plans for two new launches at 19° East in 2006 stay on track. This will enable Astra to move existing capacity at the 19° East position to the UK digital orbital position at 28° East.

For now, Sky is welcoming newcomers with open arms – provided an eight-point checklist is adhered to. The aspirant channel provider must have a broadcast licence and an EPG contract, capacity and uplink contracts, must provide EPG schedules and a minimum of 12 hours of original programming, and have defined a conditional access template. Conditional access contracts and a subscriber management service provider are optional.

Panellists at the conference were sceptical about the current hype surrounding HDTV, which could quickly eat up existing capacity if demand takes off. Andrea Winn, sales director, BT Broadcast Services said she remained unconvinced by the current buzz about HD picture quality. Winn pointed out that viewers are driven by the content of programmes and not by technical advances. With an HDTV channel needing a bit rate of 10mbps each would take up space that could house five standard definition channels. Panellists speculated that an alternative strategy could be to improve further the quality of the standard Pal format.