Nine was so hush-hush on plans for its new digital channel GO! that it didn’t give OzTAM enough notice of its launch date.
As a result ratings will not emerge until Sunday August 23.
OzTAM chief Kate Inglis-Clark said Nine had failed to give the required notice for its August 9 launch.
“We just put the systems in place,” Inglis-Clark told The Australian. “It’s just timing. They had to give eight weeks’ notice.”
By that reckoning Nine must have told OzTAM its plans on or abouts June 28th.
In this most confidential of industries, it didn’t make any public announcements for another two and a half weeks, July 15.
Les Sampson, Head of Multichannels, said Nine would also push for changes to classification rules as it wades through the limitations around daytime programming.
Clarification: Despite previous advice to this site, share for GO! was added to Nine last week. Apologies for any confusion.
Source: The Australian
Tune in Channel 90 or call Nine or manufacturer?
How do I connect to the Go channel on my T V please?
I must admit, the pixelation of GO!! in Brisbane has been quite bad. Although, Monday nights broadcast was slightly better. It wasn’t as good as One SD, but close. I think when Nine get the picture quality right on GO!!, they will be a force to be reckoned with. I bet, Packer is kicking himself now.
Can’t wait to see some audience numbers for Go! and how it is doing in the 16-39 and 18-49 brackets.
@Bindi: One SD is actually worse than GO!’s quality in Sydney from my experience.
Seven should be quite concerned – their delay in launching a second channel is only providing Nine a greater net to catch available audience on GO!! and the main channel. Whilst picture quality in Brisbane is poor, Nine is giving greater viewer choice unlike Seven who has failed thus far.
The macroblocking here in Brisbane on GO! is offensive. My downloaded shows look better. That said, at least they have some decent shows on there. It’s like a poor man’s TV1.
I personally have no problem with Go!’s pic quality, though I only get Wollongong’s version (88 instead of 99).
I really hope this station rates well, as I hope One does too. It’ll show that digital channels can bring an audience and may entice 7 to put quality shows on (unlike a timeshift that the name 7plus sounds like).
Tuesday nights on GO are the big winner in our house … leaves all the rest for dead! And I agree that the picture quality is a rip off!
Jack!
@adam nelson…huh? there is no HD go channel, so i have no idea where you were even looking and expecting to see a guide, there is only 1 channel called GO and it is SD only (so 576i) the guide you have found is the only one that exists to be found.
has channel 9 even gotten the message that the bitrate has to be increased, the picture quality is worse than analog the way it is now, they can spare a little off their other 2 channels. 10 managed to find a pretty good balance between all 3 channels, i know some people still whinge but ONESD is a whole lot better than GO is so they really have nothing to complain about.
Yeh GO is looking a bit like a digital 44 channel, in some cases worse.
But the same could be said for One Digital, it looks just as bad as GO! any reason for that? (fortunately I also get 1HD, and that’s excellent quality, although I can’t record HD, only Sd).
I noticed the guide for the HD go! channel doesn’t show any data
But the 576i channel does
They had only 1 BBT (down from 4 last week), an extra Wipeout and Aliens to take up the time.
@Casey – the reason there are no more HD channels is the bandwidth the government has allowed and the current rules they have imposed with One HD and 2 SD channels per commercial FTA broadcaster. So it’s a mix of legal and technical reasons we don’t have all SD channels simulcasted in HD.
As for the picture quality it varies depending where you live but should get better before the trial/test period ends.
Casey, as has been said numerous times – the bitrate that Nine are using for the channel is far too low.
Joanna, they still showed they hardly changed it (well compared to the channel 9 ) they just had 2 less episodes of big bang theory and 1 more episode of wipeout.
So all the same programs are on just the amount of episodes changed.
thanks for tthat Vic.. i thought that might be the case.. i dont have a HD TV which is probably why the rescanned editions of seinfeld into widescreen has that glitch appear.
Where abouts are you? I ask cause here in Perth I’m getting none of those graphical glitches.
With Seinfeld, I believe GO is showing the newly mastered HD copies (the original film was rescanned, giving an almost HD quality to the picture) from TBS.
again slightly off topic as per casey’s comments i too have noticed that when Seinfeld is on there are some white dotted lines that appear across the widescreen top bar… it doesn’t happen to any of the other shows… is this beause seinfeld never originally appeared in widescreen ?? so i was just wondering whether anyone else has encountered this
Sorry if this is slightly off topic, but on the subject of Nine’s GO!, is there any reason why it’s picture quality is quite poor for some reason (there’s nothing wrong with my HD TV, or with my TV reception) and why all free to air channels don’t currently have permission to broadcast both their standard channel and all their extra channels in HD (instead of only currently having one HD channel only). I’m sure at some point, all channels will be able to all broadcast in HD.
Why so secretive.
So far it seems to be a channel which just shows repeats upon repeats.
Nothing special but a good catchup on some shows
MIght get better ratings if they don’t change the programs – Channel Nine all over again – why was there 2 episodes of Wipeout last night instead of Big Bang Theory
Been loving GO! since it launched, but I do wonder how long the novelty of seeing The Jetsons, Flintstones, Seinfeld etc will last…
The classification rules for digital only channels should be exactly the same as for the standard free to air channels. Unlike a Foxtel box, most (all?) freeview decoders don’t have an ability to block programs based on ratings. We do need to protect our kids from what is available on FTA TV during the day time.
As for Go!, if they want to keep me as a viewer, they better improve the PQ. Content sources “by other means” is much better quality than the pixelation[sp] that we get on Go!
david, im’ pretty sure go’s figures will be being attributed back to nine at the moment…
I’ve said it b4 and I’ll say it again. I love GO! I was bored yesterday and ended up watching The Flintstones. Never realized it had a laugh track. Scooby Doo does too? Very annoying as it’s just not funny what is being laughed at but my point is I have increased my television viewing and watching shows i’d missed on 9. GO! is the best thing to happen to TV in a long time. Makes me think how poorly 9 is being run by letting go of all those great shows and it highlights my bias for the network, which is not really a surprise.
I think that the Go figures were included in Nine’s figures last week. Nine were too late to get separate figures for Go last week and as a result the figures and shares released were a combination of all their channels.
GO! can only be good for Nine in it’s over all numbers, it only has to take a few views from the others to tip the balance.
Seven must be worried with still no 2nd SD announced but maybe OzTAM can give us a heads up?