Goodbye BBC Prime. Hello BBC Entertainment

Written by TVSA Team from the blog News on 11 Jun 2008
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Earlier this year TVSA broke the news that the BBC channels would be undergoing dramatic changes involving the disappearance of both BBC Prime and BBC Food.

We can now report that it's in the process of happening with a scheduled makeover date set for September, 2008.

At the beginning of the month BBC will be launch four new channels on DStv - with a fifth in the pipeline.

On 1 September a new channel called BBC Entertainment will replace BBC Prime and on 2 September BBC Lifestyle will replace BBC Food.

On 3 and 4 September respectively, two new additional channels will launch: BBC Knowledge - a non-fiction channel covering everything from technology to history; and CBeebies - a BBC pre-schoolers channel for children under six.

As the name suggests, BBC Entertainment will feature entertainment shows with a focus on primetime UK drama and comedies. While we haven't managed to get our clutches on the line-up yet we presume the programming will be a more cutting-edge makeover of BBC Prime aka fewer repeats of dated shows with more of what we've been seeing over the past few months e.g. Dancing With The Stars, Life On Mars etc.

As for what's to become of the cookery shows on BBC Food, BBC Lifestyle's a reinvention of the channel that's going to feature cookery shows with the added flavour of shows covering home makeovers, fashion, beauty, health, parenting and design.

While the news hasn't officially been released yet a DStv mole has informed TVSA that a fifth channel's also in the pipeline in the form of BBC Africa - a BBC channel with a focus on and in Africa, with headquarters in South Africa to make it happen. We'll keep you posted as soon as a date's confirmed.

In addition to all the BBC changes DStv will also be introducing two additional channels soon: Nickelodeon - the popular US channel for children aged between 7 and 12; and Jetix - an animated cartoon channel from the Disney fold.

While the channel numbers and dates haven't been confirmed yet, both are scheduled to launch between July and September.

In the meantime these are the channel numbers for the new BBC Channels:

BBC Entertainment: 102
BBC Lifestyle: 180
BBC Knowledge: 251
CBeebies: 306

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Channels in this post: BBC Entertainment, BBC Lifestyle, BBC Prime, BBC Knowledge

Tags: DStv

3 Comments

Bra Bizza
11 Jun 2008 11:29

with the new HD PVR.....they should have added a feature that records more than 4 channels....this "so much more" is gettin a bit much

gorlygirl
13 Jun 2008 09:06

I think you have the channel number for BBC Entertainment wrong - it will be on channel 120 - the same as BBC Prime

Howard
15 Aug 2008 04:09

Seems to be BBC Entertainment is just BBC Prime by another name. All the programmes listed as being great to look forward to have been around and around and around for the last year plus. Look at what BBC Entertainment is screening in Hong Kong and you will see it's the same old repeated garbage. Look at their forum (used to be on BBC Entertainment under Comunnity) and you will see the same comments as were on BBC Primes Community forum before it was pulled because it became too much of an embrassement

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