Coming Soon to Virgin TV

[Felim_Doyle]

Originally Posted by TV Boy

=== Final Did you Know? ===
* Telewest originated in Croydon in 1984 under the name "Croydon Cable". In 1988 United Cable of Denver, US, acquired Croydon Cable. Franchises extended the company scope in Edinburgh and the south-west and south-east of England. In 1989 United Cable merged with United Artists Cable International. In 1991 United Artists merged with their largest shareholder TCI (now Liberty Media), to form the largest cable operator in the US. TCI and US West announced a joint venture, and in 1992 the joint venture company became Telewest Communications. In 1995 Telewest merged with SBC Communications, adding franchises in the Midlands and North West serving 1.3 million homes. In 1998 Telewest announced a merger with General Cable, and acquired an outstanding interest in Birmingham Cable, adding a further 1.7 million franchise homes in Yorkshire, west London and Birmingham. Telewest purchased the remaining 50% stake in Cable London from NTL in 1999, adding 0.4 million franchise homes in north London. In April 2000 Telewest merged with Flextech, and in November extended its cable network with the acquisition of Eurobell, taking the total number of homes passed to 4.9 million..
* NTL originated from:- Barclay Knapp and George Blumenthal, the founders of the cellular network company Cellular Communications, Inc. (sold to Airtouch in 1996), established International CableTel in 1993. They founded CableTel in order to take advantage of the deregulation of the UK cable market. Initially, Cabletel acquired local cable-franchises covering Guildford, Northern Ireland and parts of Central Scotland and South Wales. In 1996 CableTel acquired National Transcommunications Limited (NTL), the privatised UK Independent Broadcasting Authority transmission-network. In 1998 CableTel adopted "NTL" as its new name.
The company spent heavily on expanding its network and on acquisitions � including the consumer cable division of Cable and Wireless, bought for $10bn, and partly paid for with a $5.5bn investment from France Telecom. NTL also began to expand outside the UK in 2000, buying into markets on continental Europe and in Ireland.

Who says nostalgia is a thing of the past? I love these snippets. Thanks TV Boy.

I wonder why CableTel adopted the NTL name?

I know that Bell Cablemedia (yes, their website is still there) originally dug up the pavements here in Aylesbury but all work stopped for about a year (as I recall) during takeover negotiations with Cable & Wireless Communications. Subsequently that became NTL and the rest, as they say, is history.

More here and here with further Cable Forum discussion here.

I hope this isn't too far off topic. I guess it qualifies more as 'Previously on Virgin TV' rather than 'Coming Soon to Virgin TV'.

[windy]

Originally Posted by TV Boy

Go down to Feb, 2009.

Oh got ya..

[dd11]

Hi Tv boy do you think that there would be any chance of LIVING bringing out a LIVING HD channel as it is owned by Virgin Media this would be a good step for them to make available only on the VM platform ?

[Hiroki]

TV Boy I hope you don't mind me asking but do you know if the Style Network (I think it's called that) will be joining Virign Media?

[RamJet]

Is there any news on when/whether The Military History Channel will broadcast on VM

[Andrewcrawford23]

The answer to above threee questions is very unlikely to no

[Media Boy UK]

Originally Posted by dd11

Hi Tv boy do you think that there would be any chance of LIVING bringing out a LIVING HD channel as it is owned by Virgin Media this would be a good step for them to make available only on the VM platform ?

No but you ever know they do have Channel 113 free?

---------- Post added at 09:10 ---------- Previous post was at 09:08 ----------

Originally Posted by Hiroki

TV Boy I hope you don't mind me asking but do you know if the Style Network (I think it's called that) will be joining Virign Media?

Style Network may appear on Virgin TV when the deal with it sister channel E! is up.

---------- Post added at 09:14 ---------- Previous post was at 09:10 ----------

Originally Posted by RamJet

Is there any news on when/whether The Military History Channel will broadcast on VM

Again MH may appear when the deal is up with it sister channel History/Bio. But it may appear soon as Virgin need to add The History Channel +1 to Ex-Telewest and they need to sign an new deal to do it.

[Neel lad]

hi tv boy do you know when will the indian channels from Sky will be launching on Virgin media? because sky has loads of of indian channels!!!

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by Neel lad

hi tv boy do you know when will the indian channels from Sky will be launching on Virgin media? because sky has loads of of indian channels!!!

Simple answer never, sky has loads because the channels pay to get on sky epg, but virgin pay for the channels, i aint trying to be offensive with this next comment (but i suspect there is maybe 200000 max asian people subscriber to virgin) with that low amount virgin will not see the channel worth it unless the get pretty good audiance share son sky.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by weststandguy

Is this a wind up?

i would say so.

[sherer]

Originally Posted by Andrewcrawford23

Simple answer never, sky has loads because the channels pay to get on sky epg, but virgin pay for the channels, i aint trying to be offensive with this next comment (but i suspect there is maybe 200000 max asian people subscriber to virgin) with that low amount virgin will not see the channel worth it unless the get pretty good audiance share son sky.

Yes this is the main thing limiting channels getting on VM and I don't know why VM don't just say if people want to sign up to VM then pay to be in the EPG, the channels already make money out of advertising and reaching more viewers means they get more money.

I know VM have a closed network but with their larger dishes they can still pickup the channels and broadcast them on their network

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by sherer

Yes this is the main thing limiting channels getting on VM and I don't know why VM don't just say if people want to sign up to VM then pay to be in the EPG, the channels already make money out of advertising and reaching more viewers means they get more money.

I know VM have a closed network but with their larger dishes they can still pickup the channels and broadcast them on their network

Nothing to do witht he dishes. It is to do with ever channel that launchs on virign media needs a space of bandwidth on virgin tv network, virign has to pay to maintain this so it costs thema lot if people jsut launched and launcehd like on sky. SKY do not pay for the maintence of the sateilitte so channesl can launch as often as they want with the expection of getting onto the epg/.

[sherer]

Originally Posted by Andrewcrawford23

Nothing to do witht he dishes. It is to do with ever channel that launchs on virign media needs a space of bandwidth on virgin tv network, virign has to pay to maintain this so it costs thema lot if people jsut launched and launcehd like on sky. SKY do not pay for the maintence of the sateilitte so channesl can launch as often as they want with the expection of getting onto the epg/.

ah i see so it's more paying for bandwidth than paying to be in the EPG ?

[Andrewcrawford23]

Originally Posted by sherer

ah i see so it's more paying for bandwidth than paying to be in the EPG ?

Something like that but it quite complicated. for both sky and virgin.

If you ook it like this channels pay sky to get onto sky and virgin pays channel to go onto virgin.

The channels pay for there bandwidht on satlillete but virgin pays for the bandwidth on virign,

[Media Boy UK]

I have just noted that Crime (Virgin Channel 237 ) is now broadcasing 24 hours a day.

---------- Post added at 10:53 ---------- Previous post was at 10:51 ----------

Also Bio (Virgin Channel 242) is now on air from 6am - 3am (was 8am - 2am)

---------- Post added at 11:14 ---------- Previous post was at 10:53 ----------

Channel Five is looking into the possibility of launching a stand-alone children's channel based on its Milkshake strand of pre-school programmes, director of programmes Ben Gale revealed last weekend.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/organgri..._launch_s.html

Info from Gurdian online