I did a search and wasn't able to find anything about Virgin One recently on these forums, if it has already been posted, I apologise and please feel free to remove this thread.
According to an article on
Broadcastnow it seems that Virgin is getting ready to start a new channel Virgin One to rival Sky, along with it's new Sports News channel. The channel is planned for launch on Freeview, as well as highly likely on cable. It's most likely going to replace the current offering as FTN, and seems to be going to carry mainly US imports.
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Originally Posted by From the article
Talk of the offering, which Broadcast understands will be called Virgin One and be available on cable and Freeview, has been gaining momentum following frenzied bidding by the cable group for US shows from the LA Screenings.
One source said: "Virgin Media seems to be trying to buy everything [from the LA Screenings]. The word from the US is it is because they are launching a new channel to take on Sky One."
Virgin Media has also begun commissioning shows from UK indies for the new channel, which will be positioned between its female skewing offering Living and the male skewing Bravo. It is also likely to replace Virgin Media's Freeview channel FTN.
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While this could be good news, I think it will be sad to see FTN go as they did carry some good programming and I thought it was quite a good channel (I guess I won't be seeing Crystal Maze on Virgin One on freeview anymore).
Plus, it almost makes one wonder whether they were truly serious about getting the Sky channels at all, or whether they had plans for all of this and getting rid of the Sky channels on the VM platform was part of the plan. Gives them the money to do these ventures and knocks out the competition on the platform so they get more viewers.