Rebirth of England

Sure enough, just as Barron expected, negotiations on ITV Digital began to accelerate a week later.

After all, the BBC is a public television station and needs to assume more social responsibilities. This is determined by its own nature.

Therefore, under OFCOM's pressure, they finally made some compromises - of course, in turn, OFCOM also made concessions and gave the BBC more support.

Similarly, in the negotiations before the final agreement was reached, Summit Digital TV also received corresponding support - Summit Digital TV (SDTV) is Summit Media's tender for ITV Digital's terrestrial digital TV license. company created.

This includes waiving the terrestrial digital license fee for SDTV, but the premise is that the Freeview platform, which holds 60% of the shares, will invest no less than 500 million pounds within five years to promote terrestrial digital television systems. And within five years, SDTV will open no less than 5 TV channels for free broadcast to the public.

In addition, OFCOM also promised to allocate special funds for the infrastructure construction of terrestrial digital television systems, including the research and development of signal towers and related technologies.

The Freeview platform is a platform jointly established by the BBC and SDTV, which have terrestrial digital TV licenses, to broadcast terrestrial digital TV programs to the public for free - OFCOM still insists that the terrestrial TV licenses they have obtained need to be restricted and must not charge fees.

Because most of the TV equipment currently used by British households uses analog signals, before these users switch to digital TVs, they must use a specialized set-top box if they want to receive digital TV programs.

Moreover, for example, BSkyB, which uses a satellite digital TV system, and ITV Digital, which uses a terrestrial digital TV system, their set-top box equipment is definitely not universal.

Often after users buy one set-top box, they rarely buy another set-top box. Therefore, ITV Digital lost to Sky TV in the previous competition due to its rigid management.

Now that the BBC and SDTV have jointly obtained the terrestrial digital TV license from ITV Digital, in order for users to receive their TV signals, they naturally need to launch their own set-top boxes.

Therefore, after consultation, the BBC and SDTV decided to jointly launch the Freeview platform to promote their set-top boxes and content on the platform to users.

Just like if you buy a set-top box, you can receive many TV channels through it.

Because of doubts about the strength of SDTV, OFCOM's initial opinion was to establish a terrestrial digital TV broadcast platform with the BBC as the mainstay. As for SDTV, it can participate or pay a certain fee to the broadcast platform launched by the BBC to enter Going to this platform is similar to the stall fee paid by a brand owner when it is listed in a supermarket.

This is mainly because the BBC is one of the giants in the British television broadcasting industry and has a wealth of television channels that can be brought to this terrestrial digital television broadcast platform.

But Barron knew about the future prospects of terrestrial digital television in the UK and only paid a fee to join the BBC's independent platform. Naturally, he was excluded first. He cannot be controlled by others in the future.

Therefore, we can only choose to work with the BBC to build a terrestrial digital TV broadcast platform. However, at this time, the BBC is actually not very enthusiastic about this platform because they themselves have many TV businesses, including terrestrial digital TV, terrestrial analog TV, And satellite TV... there isn't much incentive to develop terrestrial digital TV alone.

You know, promoting terrestrial digital TV is expensive. Just distributing set-top boxes to users for free requires an investment of at least 100 million pounds per year!

Yes, because at this time BSkyB Digital has started a free set-top box strategy. If they want to compete with it, they cannot sell set-top boxes to users for a fee like ITV Digital did before. They can only follow the strategy of free distribution. .

In this case, Summit Media directly proposed that they are willing to bear more promotion funds for the Freeview platform.

Their proposal naturally made the BBC overjoyed.

In addition to having "taken advantage of" willing to provide more funds, you must know that the BBC has more than ten TV channels, and SDTV can only get one TV channel at the beginning. It is not yet known whether it will succeed. Now there are people who are willing to provide more funds for terrestrial digital TV broadcasting platforms, which can be said to be "good people".

As for the profitability of the Freeview platform?

Only terrestrial digital TV systems can account for a relatively large proportion of users, and when other TV channels want to enter it, they can charge each other's fees.

Both ON Digital and ITV Digital were defeated by BSkyB Digital. Facing a strong opponent, what are the chances of Freeview succeeding?

Therefore, in the end, SDTV, a "new player" in the television industry, took a controlling stake in the Freeview platform, which surprised many people.

Similarly, this also means that Summit Media needs to bear 60% of the five-year promotion investment of more than 500 million pounds committed by the Freeview platform to OFCOM, which is 300 million pounds - this is only the promotion cost of the Freeview platform to users. .

Soon after, Barron hired GranadaTV’s former creative and content director Kriya Dini through a headhunting firm to serve as SDTV’s CEO.

After he joins the company, he will begin to improve the structure of Summit Digital TV Company and prepare for the SDTV channel broadcast that will start on New Year's Day next year.

Fergal Hayden continues to lead SDTV's parent company, Summit Media, as CEO.

By next year, the second season of "The Traitors" and "Downton Abbey" will be broadcast on SDTV.

Speaking of "The Traitors", with the progress of this reality show and its twists and turns of the competition process, it has attracted more and more viewers and is extremely well-known in the UK.

By October, the ratings of the reality show "The Traitors" exceeded 60% in one fell swoop. Tens of millions of British viewers watched each episode of the show, making it a phenomenal variety show.

In fact, some of the contestants who participated in this reality show have become local celebrities - but they all signed confidentiality agreements with the show crew at the beginning, and they cannot reveal the subsequent plot until "The Traitors" is completed. , otherwise you will face huge compensation.

But you can also see the popularity of this show from here.

Therefore, the advertising sponsorship of "The Traitors" alone is expected to earn more than 30 million pounds. It can be said that Summit Media has made a lot of money from this variety show.

At this time, they have already begun preparations for the filming of the second season of "The Traitors".

Speaking of "The Traitors", another thing is that the Sinclair Group sent people to London to find Summit Media and prepared to negotiate the introduction of the variety show "The Traitors" to its TV stations.

In addition to preparing to introduce the British version of "The Traitors" to the United States for broadcast, they also want to introduce the copyright of the entire model of "The Traitors" to produce an American version of the "The Traitors" reality show.

At the same time, SDTV also intends to purchase some content from the program copyright library of Sinclair Group's TV stations for broadcast on its TV channels to fill non-prime time content.

It can be said that both parties got what they wanted, and they started friendly discussions.