[Blubatt]

I think Sky Mix will be a good addition, and the branding it has seems to be quite lovely. It will remain one of Sky's lower priority channels, but it does bring up the question of whether there are too many Sky Channels. Is the brand diluted with 3rd rate genre channels that only serve to fill slots?

[orange]

I forget quite how much of a good channel slot they had for Pick - it’s about time they took advantage of that. Looks promising.

[Brekkie]

This rebrand is a little bit of a gamble on Sky’s part. They’ve seemed quite happy to keep Pick and Challenge at arms’ length for the past few years but now Sky seem to sense they can use Freeview (and Freely I presume) as a shop window for their pay services. 

I guess Sky aren’t arsed about daytime scheduling but rather the 8-10pm primetime slot. They’ve mentioned each day in the week will be themed (drama, comedy, factual, etc) so it should be interesting to see whether Sky really put some effort in this time, or they just find something from 2010 and shove it there and forget about it. 

Saying that, they’ll need to make an effort as it risks devaluing the Sky brand now they’ve brought it back into the fold. The first series of True Detective is a fantastic watch and a really good start. Here’s hoping for more.

The trouble is for the premium shows it's likely they will only show the first series for free then expect you to subscribe for the test so whether that will pay off remains to be seen.   TBH if you've gone this long without watching them I'm not sure you'd be eager to hop on board now.

[JAS84]

Especially when Sky Mix would be showing season 1, and Sky Max will be on something like season four. You wouldn't want to watch it out of order.

[gottago]

I don't really think the main purpose of this channel is to be a shop window, I think they're revamping the channel to monetise the rights to a load of old shows they have in an age where their advertising income is stagnating on their subscription channels. No one's going to subscribe to Sky after watching two year old documentary Liverpool Narcos, for example.

Rebranding it with the Sky name gives it a bit of umph and makes it feel far more exciting than "Pick", lets them push the channel a bit more than they currently do and make a thing of it being a home of "premium" shows on Freeview. I expect series they air on this channel will air in full, assuming the ratings are good enough.

The 'shop window' idea might have been true back in the days of Sky 3 when Freeview and Sky were both at their peak but really now it's just a case of improving their free-to-air offering to maximise ad revenue.

[LargelyALurker]

Especially when Sky Mix would be showing season 1, and Sky Max will be on something like season four. You wouldn't want to watch it out of order.

Surely it's all on catch-up for Sky subscribers? How many folk are really following series on linear these days?

I do wonder why Pick and Sky's Freeview presence generally pushes Sky rather that Now. I imagine the latter is where you're more likely to convert current Freeview viewers to. I could imagine 'PICK from Now' as being an explicit shop window working well, making an explicit connection between the content they show and the more recent stuff on Now for only £6 a month or whatever.

[Neil Jones]

Surely it's all on catch-up for Sky subscribers? How many folk are really following series on linear these days?

I do wonder why Pick and Sky's Freeview presence generally pushes Sky rather that Now. I imagine the latter is where you're more likely to convert current Freeview viewers to. I could imagine 'PICK from Now' as being an explicit shop window working well, making an explicit connection between the content they show and the more recent stuff on Now for only £6 a month or whatever.

Now is the Sky budget option. Sky (the platform) will always get dibs on, well anything basically when it comes to promotion. They'll make more revenue if people subscribe to Sky than they would with Now, which undercuts the Sky platform by some considerable margin, but doesn't (and probably never will) have all the bells and whistles of its sibling services.

[Andrew Wood]

Pick HD on satellite - en.kingofsat.net 

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Documented Satellite TV charts dedicated to European viewers. Satellite and chan…
  Source: en.kingofsat.net

UK on 5831, Ireland on 5052

[Spencer]

Now is the Sky budget option.  Sky (the platform) will always get dibs on, well anything basically when it comes to promotion.  They'll make more revenue if people subscribe to Sky than they would with Now, which undercuts the Sky platform by some considerable margin, but doesn't (and probably never will) have all the bells and whistles of its sibling services.

It’s worth bearing in mind as well that in Glass and Stream, Sky now has a product that will appeal to a lot of Freeview viewers who previously wouldn’t have considered getting a satellite dish on the side of their house. I suspect the opportunity to convert people to their new IP services is part of the reason for the rebranding of Pick.

[Stuart]

Pick HD on satellite - en.kingofsat.net 

UK on 5831, Ireland on 5052

I know when they used the previous temporary Pick HD to show the football during lockdown that it was FTA, but I wasn't sure whether the HD version of the new Mix channel would be behind a paywall. It seems not, unless they change that when it goes on the EPG.

For some reason, they hide Sky News HD behind a paywall, which is a shame, as the SD version always has dreadful PQ.