[interestednovice]

I imagine Freesat & Sky are viewing things a bit differently now compared to the BBC Three closure.

Remember:

1) BBC One is the first slot on both EPGs, it’s much more powerful to leave it up with a caption so SD viewers definitely see it, rather than remove it and just get a load of complaints that “I can’t see BBC One”.

2) EPG rules. The actual purpose of the rules is to dissuade/prevent “EPG squatting” from defunct services. The thing with this set of closures is that no EPG slots would actually be freed up if the channels were removed - since they are already used by equivalent HD services on HD boxes. Therefore, there is no realistic advantage to prompt removal.

3) It is in the wider interests of both platforms to discourage SD and facilitate efforts to migrate viewers away from it. If leaving the BBC channels up with a caption helps achieve this, then they are hardly going to take issue with the BBC.

My personal guess is that a generic BBC caption will broadcast across all the SD feeds, identically, from the closure date. This will represent the first time the caption appears on channels other than BBC One, so will air it to a much wider audience. It will probably be a full-screen, completely unavoidable caption.

We will then the feeds turned off and the channels quietly de-listed after the closure message period, and the BBC will be able to hand back the extra Nightlight transponder.