BBC and ITV new Freesat television service

[Gazer]

The BBC and ITV have today launched their joint satellite television service, Freesat, which promises 200 channels by the end of this year for a one-off fee with no subscription. But when you've already got a choice bwteen BskyB, Virgin Media, Freeview and BT Vision, do you really need yet another way of getting hold of digital television? Or to put it another way - is Freesat another Freeview, coming from nowhere to be a rip-roaring success, or an ITV Digital, where great expectations ended in disaster?
Freesat's backers are being relatively modest in their claims for the service. It has two functions - to offer another way of getting free digital television in areas where viewers struggle to get Freeview, and to give the ten million homes who've already got HD-ready sets a way of actually watching high definition TV without signing up to Sky or Virgin.
But as ITV's Michael Grade explained at this morning's launch, 90% of homes have already found a way to go digital - if not through Freeview, then via Sky or cable - so Freesat may have arrived a little late to play a major role in digital switchover. What's more BskyB has been pointing out today that for the past four years it has been offering its own free satellite service - though cynics might think that it hasn't been heavily promoted until this rival came along.
So perhaps the promise of high-definition will be the bigger draw? At launch, viewers will just get the BBC HD channel , with the promise of an ITV HD channel coming soon - which will probably not be available on Sky. But if viewers decide that HD really matters to them, will they be more likely to go the whole hog and pay up for Sky's much bigger menu of high-definition channels?
What really helped Freeview take off was a large section of the population that wanted more television - but was sniffy about having a dish or reluctant to pay a subscription. The potential audience for Freesat is bound to be much smaller, but the BBC and ITV have at least found a way of delivering their growing number of HD programmes to audiences without relying on a rival's platform.
But there's one other aspect of Freesat which makes it attractive to the BBC. What the Director General Mark Thompson was keen to point out at the launch was the ethernet port in the back of the set-top box. The plan is that viewers will plug the box into their broadband connection and that this will become a way of delivering interactive services and the iPlayer to millions of homes.
Getting the iPlayer off the computer and onto the television (and it's already available on Virgin cable) is a priority for the corporation. So if Freesat can help in that mission, then it will be seen by the BBC as a success.