Five adds interactive video channel

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UK terrestrial broadcaster Five will launch its interactive services to coincide with its Back to Reality show set to go on air from 15 February. The programme will air two live shows every night featuring ex-Reality show stars and supported by a red button interactive service. Available to sky digital viewers only, it will provide 24-hour continuous streaming of the programme, news, games, competitions, and voting, and content will also be available via a dedicated website. In the future, Five does expect to engineer its interactive service for other digital platforms. The broadcaster has purchased several megabits of bandwidth from BSkyB in a contract that goes beyond the three-week show using capacity on transponder 31, which also houses the broadcast channel. The two broadcasters collaborated in the development of the iTV applications. Going forward, Five is considering using the video-streaming capabilities of the iTV channel to run additional programming. “We are looking at all of our secondary revenue models at the moment, so it could be programming or it could be revenue-generating applications. We’re not sure how we’re going to use it. There are huge implications in running programming through a stream, such as what business model are you working with [whether ads or revenue per user],” said Simon Downing, head of marketing at Five. “We have to look at rights issues, BARB issues and scheduling issues.” The prospect is being weighed up as an alternative to the launch of a second digital channel, which Downing described as too expensive and undesirable given that Five is growing its terrestrial audience and does not yet know if it should take the step into multichannel TV.