The UK’s newest PSB-organized platform, Freely, will be made available this autumn on Amazon Fire TV Smart TVs and other Smart TVs carrying Fire TV OS in the UK (spanning Fire TV 2-Series, 4-Series and Omni Series). It means Freely will become the main TV guide across the devices involved, providing a familiar and consistent experience for consumers.
This is a significant boost to the new platform, coming after deals that have already made Freely available (in market) on televisions using TiVo OS (with Bush, Toshiba and Panasonic brands) and VIDAA OS (for Hisense). [The Fire TV collaboration is for Smart TVs and does not include portable Fire TV devices.]
“Freely and Amazon coming together is a landmark deal between Britain’s home of free live and on demand television and a global leader in the entertainment and technology sectors,” declares Everyone TV, the company behind the UK’s free-to-view platforms – Freeview, Freesat and now Freely. Everyone TV is a joint venture owned by the UK’s leading PSBs (public service broadcasters) – BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.
Emma Gilmartin, Director of Fire TV Europe at Amazon, says: “This new deal for Freely allows us to provide even more value to our customers by giving them easy access to the best free TV shows, films and live channels from UK broadcasters, alongside the great content they already enjoy on Fire TV.”
Jonathan Thompson, CEO at Everyone TV, adds: “It’s exciting to see the momentum behind Freely building so rapidly as we announce this breakthrough deal with Amazon Fire TV. A deal of this kind, between a technology giant and those working in the public interest, is remarkable. It represents a significant development in widening the availability of Freely and therefore ensuring UK audiences can access free TV well into the future.”
“Everyone TV is delighted to be working with such an important global player in the TV market,” he continues. “I am pleased Amazon sees the immense value that easy access to public service broadcaster and other free-to-view content brings to UK audiences. This is the beginning of a journey, bringing invaluable content to UK audiences and uniting what was an increasingly fragmented viewing experience.”
As part of its go-to-market strategy, Freely partners with both the OS providers and the hardware manufacturers for Smart TVs and has announced that models using Fire TV OS will appear in the UK this autumn from TCL (spanning 43-inch, 50, 55 and 65-inch models) and Panasonic (with the latter including Freely on premium OLED televisions for the first time).
Gareth Rayworth, Manging Director at Panasonic UK, comments: “We recognize how much UK viewers value content from national broadcasters, so we are delighted to be able to offer Freely to customers on our range of new FY24 TVs with Fire OS. A collaboration between Panasonic, Amazon Fire TV and Freely is a great result for viewers in the UK by combining a trusted and highly regarded TV brand, a modern and intuitive operating system, and the best free live and on-demand TV, all in one place.”
Freely launched in April this year, featuring a next-generation programme guide with seamless access to on-demand content and giving a set-top-box like UX for viewers (without an STB) when watching PSB and other broadcaster ‘free-to-air’ TV but within the wider context of a Smart TV. It is designed to continue the curated, aggregated free TV experience UK viewers have become used to with Freeview and Freesat into the streaming age, using the same horizontal retail strategy.
A key innovation is the way allocated channel slots can be served via a broadcast signal (currently DTT) or streaming, which means it is ready for homes or rooms without access to an aerial or dish input. The service therefore provides a familiar user experience regardless of network input, although over time the channel offer may vary depending on whether it is an IP-only home or IP/DTT home receiving it.
This largely network-agnostic approach also future-proofs Freely for the day when/if any of the listed channels migrate from broadcast spectrum to streaming-only, or broadcast spectrum is eventually closed down.
Data revealed in September showed that Freely provides access to 70,000 hours of on-demand content free (including the catalogues from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5). Lottie Towler, Principal Analyst at Ampere Analysis, said, “The results of this research indicate that Freely’s extensive catalogue is highly competitive in size when compared with major streamers in the market.”
The device expansion for Freely coincides with the addition (in September) of UKTV, a popular free-to-air broadcaster, to the platform. UKTV made four linear channels available: U&Dave, U&DRAMA, U&W and U&YESTERDAY. Each of these can be received as a DTT signal or an IP stream. UKTV’s on-demand service U was added to Freely at the same time.
