[gottago]

I’d really have to disagree about MTV. MTV is a much more iconic brand for a youth audience than C5 if I’m honest - I think there’d be a lot more potential viewers tuning into MTV than 5Star if they had the option, and it would be a more suited rival to BBC Three and ITV2.

I’ve just looked - and the MTV schedules basically now look like a PlutoTV channel to begin with, and they’re also carrying 5Star shows… It just doesn’t make much sense for me why they wouldn’t make that FTA shift now. If they made it free, maybe threw some South Park reruns on in the evening like ITV2 do with their adult animation, and called it a day - it would be making a lot more money with that than probably 5Star and MTV both do in their current states.

There's really not much 16-34 audience left to build on on the digital channels anymore. I don't think even C5 consider 5Star to be a younger skewing channel these days. E4 has been honest about aiming its commissioners at an older audience, no one watches ITV2 when Love Island isn't on, BBC3's linear relaunch has been an utter failure with shows barely able to rate in the tens of thousands.

I'm not convinced MTV would do better than 5Star, the fact they're showing old 5Star shows on it perhaps proves that. I expect they'll just rinse MTV until the subscription model money dies out and then perhaps make it a Pluto only brand where there are already a few MTV branded channels. The future of digital linear channels is the elderly, frankly.