BFBS Television started in
Celle, near
Hanover in the then
West Germany, on 18 September 1975 from Trenchard Barracks. This used taped broadcasts from the
BBC and
ITV, flown to Germany from London, which were then rebroadcast using low-power
UHF transmitters. Live broadcasts of news and sport began in 1982, using a
microwave link between the UK and West Germany, extending as far east as
West Berlin. The BFBS TV service used the 625-line PAL system, used in the UK as well as West Germany. By 1982, it was available at 50 sites throughout northern and central regions of West Germany. It was known as
SSVC Television (
Services Sound and Vision Corporation) between 1985 and 1997, when it reverted to the BFBS name. Today it broadcasts live via
satellite. DVDs are still sent to forces serving in more remote areas. There was also a service known as
Navy TV, which broadcast time-shifted versions of the channel to
Royal Navy vessels around the world via
military satellite.
Programmes Most programmes came from the BBC, ITV,
Channel 4,
Channel 5 and
Sky, including news from
BBC News,
Sky News and
ITN, and sport from
BBC Sport and
Sky Sports. BFBS also has its own programmes, including the daily news bulletin programme
Daily Forces News.
Availability BFBS Television was broadcast in some areas as a terrestrial service in the clear using low-power transmitters to minimise "overspill" to non-service audiences and protect copyright. Despite this, it could be received in
West Berlin, and its listings were carried in local
German language magazines. However, the signal was largely confined to the British Sector, reflecting the situation with its American counterpart,
AFN TV, whose signal was similarly limited to the American Sector. Until 1997, it was also widely available in Cyprus, but its signal was encrypted or confined to the
Sovereign Base Areas of
Akrotiri and Dhekelia. Following complaints from local broadcasters like
Lumiere TV, which had bought local rights to show English
football and other programming, the decision was made to encrypt the signal, starting with
Nicosia in April 1997 and ending with
Larnaca and
Limassol in May 1998. The decision was criticised by
MPs in an
Early Day Motion. BFBS later ended terrestrial transmissions of its TV channel in Cyprus in January 2009. However, as a result of
card sharing by services personnel, BFBS TV (later
BFBS 1) was available to unentitled viewers on the island, along with other channels until 2011, when an illegal pay-TV service was closed down in a joint operation by the
Cyprus Police and the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance. In the
Falkland Islands, SSVC TV was originally only available to entitled viewers in
Mount Pleasant, and when a repeater in
Sapper Hill was installed by civilians to relay the signal to
Stanley in 1988, it was shut down owing to issues related to broadcasting rights for US programming. It was only on Christmas Eve of that year that the service became available to civilian residents. Initially this consisted of prerecorded programmes brought over on cassette from the UK, meaning that they were shown two weeks after the UK, However, in 1997, the channel, by now rebranded as BFBS, was broadcast via satellite, enabling news and sport to be shown on the same day as they had been shown in the UK, but
timeshifted by three to four hours to take account of the time difference. This expanded the civilian terrestrial TV service as part of a digital upgrade, which included BFBS 1 and BFBS 2. BFBS 1 and 2 also became available to civilian audiences in
Tristan da Cunha. British Forces and their families stationed at
British Army Training Unit Suffield (BATUS), located at
Canadian Forces Base Suffield in Canada, had access to BFBS 1, a limited amount of BFBS 2 and BFBS 3 and Sky News on a 7-hour timeshift from CET. During the day, the television channel that BFBS 2/3 broadcast on, played BFBS Radio 1.
Content and channels Until 27 March 2013, there were five BFBS Television services: •
BFBS 1 (launched in September 1975; formerly BFBS Television and SSVC Television) – general programming from chat shows to soap operas, dramas to news, documentaries to sport. Relayed the
BBC News Channel overnight and was later replaced by
BBC One. •
BFBS 2 (launched in 2001) – a six-hour block of general entertainment and sports programmes shown four times around the clock. Replaced by a variation of
BBC Two and merged with BFBS 3 Kids. •
BFBS 3 Kids (launched in 2008) – children's programming and factual entertainment. •
BFBS 4 (launched in May 2008) – movie channel with two films a day, each shown six times around the clock. •
BFBS 1 Day Later (launched in 2008) – time-shifted channel which aired programmes from the previous day later at peak time in Afghanistan. A combined version of the four main channels, called
BFBS Navy TV, was available on some naval vessels. In 2005, BFBS also began distributing commercial networks
Kiss TV (previously
Q),
Sky News,
Sky Sports 1 and
Sky Sports 2 to certain areas. It also started a movie channel on 2 May 2008, using money that it saved following the
Premier League's decision to waive the £250,000 rights fee. In 2010, BFBS also added Nepali TV (a TV channel in the Nepali language, based in the UK) to its channel line-up for the benefit of Gurkha soldiers. This was replaced by
Nepal Television (the state TV broadcaster of Nepal) on 1 March 2016.
Service changes SSVC was awarded a new ten-year contract by the Ministry of Defence commencing on 1 April 2013. Fewer overseas troop deployments and reduced budgets resulted in a change to the previous TV service. Since 27 March 2013, BFBS TV has offered
timeshifted versions of
BBC One,
BBC Two,
ITV, as well as two channels of its own.
BFBS Extra offers a variety of entertainment programming from
U&W (formerly Watch),
U&Dave,
Sky One,
National Geographic Channel,
ITV2,
3 and
4, the
History Channel,
Sky Atlantic and previously
Channel 4 and
Channel 5.
BFBS Sport carries sport from
BT Sport (replacing
ESPN),
Sky Sports, and
Eurosport. BBC Two carries children's programming from
CBBC and
CBeebies until the late afternoon or early evening, while BFBS Extra 2 carries programming from
Pop until the evening. Additionally, the BBC One and ITV feeds are timeshifted to hit peak time in local time zones. Channel 4 and Channel 5 later became available as separate channels in 2019.
Forces TV On 10 June 2014, SSVC launched
Forces TV, a new channel aimed at the
British Armed Forces. It was available on BFBS, Sky channel 181 in the United Kingdom only, Virgin Media channel 274 in the United Kingdom, Freeview channel 96, Freesat channel 165, and on satellite Eutelsat 10A (10°E) alongside BFBS the Forces Station and on Astra2 satellite 28°E free-to-air. Its content was a mixture of news reports, entertainment, documentaries and features produced by BFBS. It was independent from the
Ministry of Defence and was funded through advertising and sponsorship. On 30 June 2022, due to the loss of its Freeview channel slot, Forces TV permanently closed down on all platforms at 11:00am. == BFBS Online ==