DB7

UKTV to rebrand channels

UKTV has revealed that Richard & Judy's new show will air on a channel called Watch, which will replace UKTV Gold+1, and has also confirmed the rebrand of UKTV Drama and UKTV Gold.

Watch will be a contemporary channel showing BBC programmes between six months and two years after their first run alongside original commissions.

UKTV Drama will focus exclusively on crime under the new name Alibi, while UKTV Gold will show older BBC comedy shows and lose the network's prefix from its name. Both channels will, in time, carry at least 20% original content.

All three channels will launch in October.

Watch's schedule will include high-profile shows such as Cranford, Mistresses, Doctor Who, Torchwood and Lark Rise To Candleford.

Richard & Judy's as-yet unnamed primetime 60-minute show will be similar in tone to their previous ITV and C4 shows and will feature the team's popular Book Club. However, UKTV chief executive David Abraham told a Broadcasting Press Guild lunch today that the later time slot would enable the show to be more "unplugged and grown up" with a mixture of interviews, features and live music acts. The couple's daughter Chloe will present some items.

Gold – which UKTV has decided now stands for 'Go On Laugh Daily' – will show classic comedies such as Only Fools and Horses and Fawlty Towers as well as original commissions such as the previously-announced look back at the making of Blackadder.

Alibi's output will include BBC shows such as Waking The Dead and Dalziel and Pascoe.

The new channels follow UKTV's successful rebrand of UKTV G2 as Dave last year, but Abraham said no further channels would follow Dave onto Freeview.

The moves are the latest stage of UKTV's phased rebranding of its ten channel portfolio, which will continue with its factual channels in the first quarter of 2009, followed by its lifestyle channels in the second quarter.

Abraham said the launch of Watch was borne out of a realisation that UKTV Gold and UKTV Drama had something of a split personality.

"The contemporary BBC content sat uncomfortably with the warm heritage programmes," he said.

He added that the rise of video-on-demand had changed viewing habits, creating a buzz around shows for longer, and viewers wanted to find much talked-about shows more easily.

However, he shot down suggestions that BBC initiatives such as iPlayer rendered a further catch-up service redundant, arguing that even with the wider distribution of BBC programmes around the time of their linear broadcast, the combined audience prior to a UKTV screening was typically lower than when UKTV launched 11 years ago.

"We have to think of repeats differently now," he said. "If we can bring viewers high quality material they would otherwise have missed in a fragmented world, we're doing our job.

"When you get this right, people thank you for the clarity it brings to this content that's otherwise dispersed to the four winds. Culturally, everyone's feeling slightly out of date."

Steve Crook

Oh dear, they've decided to waste a chunk of money on "branding and image consultants".

Of course people like that wouldn't be able to recommend that they leave the names as they are, so that they actually describe the channels.

UKTV Drama, UKTV History etc. it's obvious what they do.
Alibi, Watch, Dave? Nobody has any idea what they do
And if they really give the "+1" channels a different name, that would be the ultimate silliness. UKTV Gold +1 shows the same programs as UKTV Gold but shows them one hour later. But if they call one George and the other one Harry nobody will know what they're meant to be

Steve

winsfordtown

UK Gold is just a shadow of it's former self. When it started it was a treasure trove of classic tv with a never ending supply of great shows. Now just shows repeats from BBC1 six months old.

EHV_Emmetts

If a viewer is that interested in watching old episodes of Only Fools And Horses and Porridge why don't they just purchase them on DVD to view when they wished? In the process they would save themselves a lot of money.

image45

I hope they rebrand UKGold with some good programmes once again like it was in the early 1990's!

"Seya next time!"

cantello

THAT WILL EXPLAIN THE RECENT INCREASE IN THE SkY PACKAGES THEN !!

Steve Crook

Don't shout, we can hear you.
There's a key to the right of your keyboard marked Caps Lock - use it to turn off the capitals

Steve

bhowells

Have to agree with you there a couple of years ago they were showing Steptoe, I know every series is readily available on dvd, but it was nice to see it on UK Gold.

byebyebadman

its weird being able to say "i remember when uk gold was good" because it doesnt seem that long since those sort of channels came out. but it has seriously gone downhill in the last few years. when i think of the ukgold brand i think of classic series like 'are you being served' and 'the young ones' not recent stuff like 'dalzel and pascoe'. i can also remember when the logo was a bar of gold with the name etched into it in the top corner of the tv screen...... great times.

jaycad

i wish there was a channel which delved into the archives-it's so refreshing to see programmes not seen for years or watch a gem that you were too young to appreciate at the time of broadcast. bbc4 does this occasionally but a channel devoted to this would be a godsend! uktv has the opportunity to do this with the revamp but i doubt it will-looking forward to the same old stuff on 'watch'! (oh,and 'watch+1)

''no diggin'!!!!!!''

winsfordtown

It would be a start if UK Gold and UK Drama as part of it's brief dropped the cheap American imports. Both channels have broadcast episodes 'Murder She Wrote' this week. I led to believe the UK stands for United Kingdom.

jaycad

i couldn't agree more!

''no diggin'!!!!!!''

johng

If I remember rightly, before the Gold Bar, I think when they started broadcasting the first logo was a gold coloured dog. When they started off the channels were not scrambled for about the first six months and at that time they did dig into the archives quite a lot.

Nowadays between UK Gold and UK Drama we just the the same old round of sitcoms repeated month after month after year.

Many were good programmes when they came out but have now been repeated so often that I just wonder how many people actually look at either of these channels.

I now rarely look at either.