Unit 32 LO2 - Rebranding Case Study

                             Virgin 1 re-branding to Channel one

This Virgin 1 Ident, shows the devil mascot drinking tea and reading the paper in some sort of café. 

BSkyB bought Virgin1, because a lot of viewers watched Virgin 1 and BskyB must’ve seen an opportunity to get more viewers and shares from sky. The entertainment channel was as part of a £160m deal to buy a group of Virgin Media Television channels, including Virgin 1.  Virgin 1 became Channel One to keep the same sort of feel as Virgin 1, just more elegant. It also inherited the schedule with minor tweaks so that people would still see channel one as Virgin 1, that led to propel the channel to the grow in the past couple years, however, after some time (it was less than three months!) bskyb removed Channel one as it wasn’t Virgin 1 and customers may have wanted more virgin 1 based products.

As you can see  the virgin one logo was slow developed into the end product of Channel One , Channel kept the bright red from virgin one as it looks more familiar that way , On the word ‘One’ The used lower cased letters all made and joined together by a red wire ,  however channel is very plain and is in grey writing, the word ‘ One’ in channel One is very distinctive  making it easily noticed by target viewers.

This is Channel one’s ident, it has the red used to made to make the ‘one’ in logo, going through different objects, slightly elegant in design but maybe this was to made to show that channel One isn’t Virgin 1, but wants to remain similar.

Channel One was a television channel that was once Virgin 1 when it was operated by Virgin Media Television and then operated and owned by BSkyB. The channel first appeared on 1 October 2007 on Freeview, Virgin Media and Sky. The channel broadcast lasted 24/7 on cable, satellite and Freeview and also had its sub one hour + channel; Channel One +1, broadcast on cable and satellite.

BSkyB took hold of the channel on 4 June 2010 and rebranded it to be Channel One. But, 15 September 2010, BSkyB announced that it would close Channel One and its sibling Channels. Channel One's Freeview space and was used to launch Challenge in its place. Channel One was closed on 1 February 2011. But before all of this it was heard that in the summer of 2007 that Virgin Media Television was to launch the new channel. The network had already expressed their interest in running a general entertainment channel to correspond with the relaunch on Telewest to Virgin Media. At first, the company stated that all of their other channels, would still run as normal, but this was changed because of ftn’s time slot.
Discuss why Channel One was taken off air.