History of Freeview UK

Freeview is the collection of free-to-air services on the digital terrestrial television platform in the United Kingdom. The service was launched at 5 am on 30 October 2002 and is jointly operated by its five equal shareholders – BBC, ITV, Channel 4, BSkyB and transmitter operator Arqiva.

Following the collapse of ITV Digital, the Independent Television Commission re-advertised the licenses for the three multiplexes (MUX B, C and D) that had been used by ITV Digital. On 16 August 2002 the licenses were granted to members of the Freeview consortium, with BBC getting multiplex B and Crown Castle getting multiplexes C and D.

Although all pay channels had been closed down on ITV Digital, many free-to-air channels continued broadcasting, including the five analogue channels, the digital BBC channels, ITV2, the ITN News Channel, S4C2, TV Travel Shop and QVC.

Freeview launched on 30 October 2002 at 5 am. Sky Travel, UK History, Sky News, Sky Sports News, The Hits and TMF were available on the launch, however many channels originally available have since been removed. BBC Four and the interactive BBC streams were moved to multiplex B. Under the initial plans, the two multiplexes operated by Crown Castle would carry eight channels altogether.

In February 2003, BBC Three replaced BBC Choice, which since February the previous year had no longer contained children's programming, as the job was fulfilled by the CBBC and CBeebies channels.

The seventh stream became shared by UK Bright Ideas and Ftn which launched in February 2003. The eighth stream was left unused until April 2004 when the shopping channel Ideal World launched on Freeview. There are now 13 streams carried by the two multiplexes, with Multiplex C carrying 5 streams, and Multiplex D carrying 8.

Pay television returned to the terrestrial platform in March 2004 when Top Up TV launched. The BBC and Crown Castle multiplexes were at the time not allowed to broadcast pay channels, so the new service broadcast on multiplex A and Channel 4's half of multiplex 2. On June 14, 2004, Cartoon Network launched onto Freeview. The autumn of 2004 saw the launch of two new free-to-air entertainment channels; ABC1 in September and ITV3 in November. ITV3 was the replacement for Plus on platforms other than Freeview.

In early 2005, two new channel streams became available on the two Crown Castle multiplexes. ITV and Channel 4 won one stream each. ITV used their channel to broadcast Men & Motors. Channel 4's entertainment channel E4 had up until this time been broadcast as part of the Top Up TV package, and at this time it was decided that E4 would be made free-to-air, as well as being available on Freeview along with E4 +1 which was launched at the same time in the newly acquired stream. They also launched a 24-hour live stream of the Big Brother house, which was later replaced by quiz channel Quiz Call.^{[citation needed]}