Foxtel and the ABC have announced this Sunday an expansion of their already long-standing relationship, which will bring ABC’s popular iview service to Foxtel’s IQ3 and IQ4 set-top boxes.
ABC iview is already available on Foxtel’s Now set top box, but this move will bring the service to an additional 1.2 million homes next month. The partnership comes little over a month after Foxtel announced it would integrate the popular Netflix service with its cable and satellite set top boxes, making three services in total now on the platform – Netflix, ABC iview and SBS On Demand.
The iview app on Foxtel will offer a catch-up service for ABC content including its
most popular shows such as Gruen, Old People’s Home for 4 Year Olds and Glitch,
together with much-loved ABC Kids programming like Bluey and Play School. The
app also provides live streams of the ABC’s television networks.
The announcement comes at an interesting time for the ABC and Foxtel, as it wasn’t that long ago that the national broadcaster was rumoured to pull its free-to-air channels from Foxtel’s re-broadcast platform in a cost-cutting measure. Fortunately, that proposal seems to have fallen by the wayside for now, which will be welcome news for many Foxtel subscribers who subscribe – in part – because they have no free to air signal anyway, and can only receive this (and other) content via Foxtel’s satellite or cable networks.