UKTV Bright Ideas was a digital television channel broadcast in the United Kingdom, which was part of the UKTV family of channels. The channel broadcast a variety of programmes, often originally aired on UKTV Style, UKTV Food and UKTV Gardens, and are thus mainly cookery, DIY and gardening. The channel broadcast from 6:00am-6:00pm every day, timesharing with Ftn.
History
On 3 October 2002, the channel was announced under the name of UK HomeStyle, as part of a preparation of networks on the Freeview service.[1] Unlike the other free-to-air offering from UKTV - UK History, UK HomeStyle would be a highlights network that would showcase programming from UK Style and UK Food for the Freeview audience, offering them what is shown on their paid networks. On 12 December, it was announced that the channel would officially launch as UK Bright Ideas, due to trademark issues with the original name and its other planned name UK Homes.[2]
Along with the rest of the UKTV network, the "UK" prefix was changed to "UKTV" on 8 March 2004 and it became UKTV Bright Ideas.
Closure
On 8 August 2007, it was announced that UKTV would replace UKTV Bright Ideas with a relaunched version of UKTV G2 on the Freeview platform.[3] This was finalised in September 2007, when they officially announced that UKTV G2 would be rebranded as Dave and launch on Freeview, replacing UKTV Bright Ideas.[4] Another reason for its closure was because the channel only averaged 0.1% of the audience share.
UKTV Bright Ideas ceased broadcasting on all platforms on 14 October 2007 at 6pm. The last programme on the channel was an episode of Antiques Roadshow, followed by a promotion of Dave. The following day, the bandwidth space that UKTV Bright Ideas used with Virgin1 (the ex-Ftn) would become home to UKTV History, downgrading its hours on the platform, while Dave launched in UKTV History's bandwidth.
