free

Film "From July, FilmFour, which launched in 1998 as a paid-for service, will screen six films a day, starting at 3pm and coming off air at 3am. Films will typically start every two hours and the aim is to offer a broader range of films than any other UK film channel, with classic films earlier in the day giving way to modern Hollywood output, followed by the best of US and UK independent cinema in peak hours and foreign language and cult cinema late at night." -- Liz Thomas reports in The Stage

FilmFour goes Freeview. It's a relaunched channel although I'm not sure how significantly different it will be. The current line-up often includes foreign films which haven't been released on video let along dvd so it's all very exciting. My only concern is that with it being free-to-air, they'll be introducing ad-breaks which I'm a bit more antsy about than others (breaking up the pace of the film, distracting if not done well etc).

That said, it might be that actually with an audience share to look at rather than a number of subscribers that the revenue stream would be higher and they might not need to. With 300,000 odd subscribed paying £7 a month equating to just £2.1 million comparing to a potential 6 million odd viewers on the Freeview platform, it could be that ads between films might be just as, if not more cost effective -- which means the style of the channel might not change too much. Still with or without ad breaks, I'm really looking forward to this. More films...