Tim Davie (Director General, BBC), Dame Carolyn McCall (CEO, ITV), Alex Mahon (CEO, Channel 4) and Sarah Rose (President, Channel 5) have met to mark the launch of new streaming service Freely.
The service is designed to allow viewers to switch seamlessly between linear and on demand services; it is a potential successor to operator Everyone TV’s Freesat and Freeview platforms.
Tim Davie commented on the power of public service broadcasters and their universality: “If you want to keep a society together, it’s having free access to these services, where prominence is not about the person who can pay the biggest cheque.”
Davie said that Britain was a market leader is this kind of platform, as he discovered on a business trip to Europe last week, a them picked up by Alex Mahon.
“People want free. It’s all well to talk about other subscription services, but people want free, especially when things aren’t looking so good. […] They don’t want thousands of services, but they do want to find content they trust. So, we have to evolve to make it easy for them to find trusted, truthful, impartial content.
“And, amazingly, we can operate together, because in France, Germany, and other countries they want to know how we’re doing this, they want to bring it to their audiences there.”
Dame Carolyn McCall discussed Freely’s role in bringing British content to viewers: “There’s a really big demand for British content compared to the streamers. The streamers wouldn’t have made Mr Bates vs. The Post Office or a lot of shows we do that are public service. They can be big hits, but they are still public service. […] Viewers want that, and every survey shows that British viewers really want to see more British content made about British issues, British families, etc. so that means this [Freely] is meeting a viewer need, it is making it very, very easy for viewers.”
Sarah Rose highlighted the simplicity of Freely: “From a viewer’s perspective, it’s the simplicity. […] The team have taken a very long time and has worked incredibly well to get something intuitive, simple and easy to use. […] All viewers want to know is intuitively they can find their content, our content.”
The first iterations of Freely are now in market, on Bush and Hisense 2024 4K smart TV models, with additional features and software updates being provided to users as the service develops. Multiple new smart TV brands are joining the Freely line-up with Toshiba, Sharp, Panasonic and Metz all confirmed to offer the new streaming service. Freely can be accessed via a broadband and/or DTT connection.
Source: https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2024/06/25/public-service-broadcasters-mark-freely-launch/