Broadband-based live TV streaming service Freely, which is backed by the major UK broadcasters and is an evolution – not yet a replacement – for the existing Freeview platform (inc. Freeview Play and Freesat), last week added eleven new TV channels to its service that have been supplied by 5 (Channel 5).
The eleven new channels and their corresponding channel numbers are 5Cops (Channel 69), 5Police Interceptors (C70), 5Movies (C77), 5A&E (C84), 5Crime (C85), 5Medical (C107), 5Yorkshire Vet (C108), 5Bargain-Loving Brits (C118), 5Trucking Hell (C119), 5History (C128) and Milkshake! (C360).
NOTE: Freely is being developed by Everyone TV (formerly Digital UK), which runs free TV in the UK and is jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5.
As you can probably tell, most of these fall into the category of being Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television (FAST) channels, which are special dedicated channels that tend to only offer content and schedules based on either a single TV show or theme. Five of the new channels (5Movies, 5Medical, 5Yorkshire Vet, 5History and Milkshake!) are said to be exclusive to Freely, but that isn’t strictly true as 5’s own streaming platform / app – available via multiple devices – also provides access to them.
Last month Freely said their platform now had well over 1 million users (up from 500,000 from Sep-Dec 2025) and the number of Freeview homes in 2034 is forecast to fall to 860,000 (here). Freely currently expects to be in 10.5 million UK households by 2034. The figures give some context to the Government’s recently proposed plan to switch-off terrestrial TV signals in either 2034 or 2044 as part of a wider change to reflect the move to internet-based streaming (here).