#Vlaanderen #stops #Antenne #RadioVisie
In Flanders, the last provider of DVB-T2, digital terrestrial television, will disappear at the end of August. TV Vlaanderen has informed its Antenne TV customers that the service is ending “due to declining interest”.
“Due to declining interest in watching TV via DVB-T and the rapid development of alternative ways of watching via streaming, we are saying goodbye to Antenna TV. 5 years after the launch, the number of Antenne TV customers is insufficient to justify further necessary investments,” said the email that Antenne TV customers received today.
“TV VLAANDEREN’s television offering has developed further in recent years and, in addition to TV via satellite, we have been offering an extensive streaming TV product, APP TV, for more than 3 years. This streaming product gives us the opportunity to offer much more content for a similar price, such as video on demand from CANAL+ and Belgian football via DAZN Eleven. That is why Antenne TV will unfortunately no longer be available from September 1, 2024.”
In December 2017, TV Vlaanderen launched the Antenne TV formula, where you could receive a basic package of 15 (commercial) channels via a DVB-T decoder and a regular old-fashioned TV antenna for a monthly subscription of just under 10 euros. The VRT also had its own (open) DVB-T network at the time.
TV Vlaanderen is part of the French Canal+ Group, which is itself part of Vivendi. TV Vlaanderen rented the privatized DVB-T channels for Antenne TV that the Flemish government had given to Norkring (as the only candidate) in 2009. Broadly speaking, these are channels 43 and 46 for Flemish Brabant, East and West Flanders and channels 44 and 47 for Antwerp and Limburg. (click on fiche).
As a RadioVisie reader you probably remember that the controversial – later withdrawn by the VRM – national channel 10, in band III for DAB+, was also part of that package of frequencies, although that channel was never rented out for commercial use.
Previously, between 2012 and 2014, Telenet rented the DVB-T channels from Norkring with the ‘Teletenne’ formulabut Telenet, which had to protect its cable subscriptions, deliberately marketed that service at such a high price that the product was bound to flop.
For the channel operator Norkring, which recently lost the operation of the commercial DAB+ mux 11A (Flanders 1) to Broadcast Partners, this is once again a major commercial blow. It now only operates the DAB+ mux 5A/5D in the Flemish broadcasting sector. So the question is how to proceed with this.
In the email sent out, TV Vlaanderen offers some formulas for switching to TV via satellite or TV via internet for free, but we will not go into that further here. There is now no trace of Antenne TV on the TV Vlaanderen website.
