Exclusive: Freeview gears up for EPG reshuffle

A major reshuffle of the Freeview EPG is planned next month to accomodate new launches and organise the channels by genre.

The expected date for the changes is Tuesday, October 18 and, barring any unforeseen problems, viewers will be able to update their boxes via a rescan some time late morning or early afternoon.

As speculated, the radio stations move to positions 700+, pushing the interactive streams to 300+. Children’s programming moves to 70-79, while news moves to 80-89. The Adult channels move to 97 and 98. Teletext and other interactive services will occupy 100+.

The various public service broadcasters shift themselves around to optimise the positions of spinoff stations: the likes of BBC Four, ITV3 and More4 get bumped around along with the children’s and news channels. What is also clear is that the commercial multichannel broadcasters have generally resisted the opportunity to move and there has been no mass migration of, for example, music and selling channels into their own sections.

As the biggest change to the EPG layout since Freeview began, broadcasters will need to be proactive in getting users to rescan their boxes / IDTVs. One of the planned measures is pop up messages on various channels on the early evening on the 18th.

Click here to see Freeview's new EPG lineup in full.