Vintage TV leaves Freesat over carriage cost

Music channel Vintage TV left Freesat.

The Vintage TV channel was removed from the free-to-air satellite service on Thursday, with Vintage TV blaming Freesat’s new charging structure.

The channel also urged viewers to contact the UK’s broadcast regulator to complain. But Freesat says the fees have been lowered.

In a statement Vintage TV said: “Freesat’s new charging policy fails to address the commercial constraints on small, independent channels like ours. To continue providing Vintage TV on Freesat would result in us having less money to invest in making British programmes, so there would be fewer opportunities for music talent to be seen and heard on TV.”

It added “If you are unhappy with Vintage TV coming off Freesat, please direct your complaints to Ofcom”, although Ofcom has so far been reluctant to deal with what it sees as commercial relationships between broadcasters and platform operators.

Vintage TV is the second channel to publicly criticise changes at Freesat for coming off the platform. Earlier this year, Channel 4 dropped its HD channel from the service in protest over costs.

The details of the carriage terms remain confidential between the two parties, so it seems the viewers have been left in limbo with no-one wanting to take ownership and no clear answer to the issue. Freesat is telling viewers to contact Vintage TV and not itself about the issue.

Vintage TV, although not available on the Freesat guide, is still available in “non freesat mode”, using frequency 11597 V DVB-S 22000 5/6.

Vintage TV continues to be broadcast free-to-air on Sky channel 367.