Freely
Freely is a free streaming television platform for the United Kingdom, launched on 30 April 2024 by Everyone TV, the organisation jointly owned by the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Built into smart televisions, it delivers live channels and on-demand programmes over broadband, with no aerial, no satellite dish and no subscription. Freely was the first streaming proposition launched jointly by all four of Britain's public service broadcasters, and it was designed to answer a structural question facing British television: as viewing moves online, how can free, universal, public service television survive the journey? Its answer is to make the familiar experience of British free TV — a guide, channel numbers, live programmes alongside catch-up — work over the internet alone, preserving a shared national television culture in the streaming age.
Background: Everyone TV and Free Television
Freely comes from Everyone TV, the company that runs free television in the UK and already operates the Freeview terrestrial platform and the Freesat satellite service. Everyone TV is jointly owned by the four public service broadcasters: the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, the last owned by Paramount. The company, formerly known as Digital UK, rebranded as Everyone TV in January 2023 to mark Freeview and Freesat coming together in one venture, and in February 2024 it confirmed that a new joint streaming platform, Freely, would launch in the second quarter of that year.
The strategic logic was demographic. Everyone TV's own research predicted that more than half of UK homes would watch television exclusively over broadband by 2030, even though many of the remainder would continue with terrestrial, satellite or cable. If free television remained tied to aerials and dishes, its universality would slowly erode. Freely was built to future-proof public service broadcasting by moving the free platform itself onto broadband before audiences drifted entirely into paid and global subscription services.
Launch on 30 April 2024
Freely launched on 30 April 2024, available initially through the next generation of smart TVs then going on sale, with Hisense as the first television partner bringing Freely sets to market that day. The launch was described by the BBC's director of distribution and business development, Kieran Clifton, as a historic moment for UK television, and by Everyone TV's chief executive, Jonathan Thompson, as the next phase of free TV's evolution — a reflection of the fact that growing numbers of viewers watch online but still want easy access to the shared experience of live television. BBC director-general Tim Davie framed it in terms of universality: sustaining public service television for all audiences in a digital age, so that no one is left behind.
From the start, Freely aggregated live channels and on-demand content from all four backers in a single interface, and content from Scotland's STV and Wales's S4C, the free-to-air public service broadcasters for those nations, was also available. ITV pointed to the impact of programmes such as its drama Mr Bates vs the Post Office as evidence of the continuing importance of British public service content that Freely existed to carry.
How Freely Works
A Freely television can be placed anywhere in the home with a Wi-Fi connection, removing the need for an aerial point or satellite dish in that room. Viewers browse and watch live channels streamed over the internet, and can switch seamlessly between live programmes and on-demand content from the broadcasters' own players. Programmes from the public service broadcasters sit alongside other free-to-air channels, and the content line-up can vary depending on whether the set is used with broadband alone or with a hybrid connection combining broadband and an aerial, which opens up a broader range of channels.
Because the service is integrated into the television rather than installed as one app among many, it effectively acts as the set's native free-TV layer. A dedicated Freely button on the remote control takes viewers to a browse screen aggregating recommended live and on-demand programming from across the supported broadcasters, organised into curated rails — including rails for each public service broadcaster and genre rails such as kids, comedy and factual — refreshed regularly to keep the selection current.
Guide, MiniGuide and Viewing Features
Freely's interface was unveiled ahead of launch with three headline features. The seven-day TV Guide, reached with the guide button on the remote, provides a consistent programme guide across all Freely televisions and links programmes being watched live to related on-demand content. The MiniGuide is a pop-up interface that appears whenever a viewer switches channel, showing what is on, what is on next and what else is available, and allowing viewers to browse other channels, find related live or on-demand programmes, access additional episodes and toggle subtitles and audio description without leaving the programme they are watching.
Viewers can pause live television — for up to fifteen minutes in the implementation described at launch, handled in the cloud rather than on local storage — and can restart a programme they have joined part-way through. Restart works by deep-linking into the relevant broadcaster's own player app, such as BBC iPlayer, so a restarted programme plays from the beginning within that broadcaster's service. Early hands-on and analytical coverage was not uniformly glowing: reviewers noted the absence of recording, the need to sign in separately to each broadcaster's app for some functions, and the feeling that the broadcasters still promoted their own services. Those critiques captured the tension inside Freely's design — a unified front door opening onto four separately owned houses.
Television Partners and Expansion
Freely's reach depends on manufacturers building it into sets. Hisense signed a five-year deal announced in December 2023 and launched the first Freely televisions. Vestel, the European manufacturer behind brands including Toshiba, Bush and JVC, followed with its own five-year agreement under which Freely would be the native guide on Vestel televisions, and Xperi's TiVo platform planned to offer Freely as part of its operating system, initially on Vestel-made products. TCL also agreed to include Freely in its 2024 smart TVs.
In October 2024 a landmark deal brought Freely to Amazon Fire televisions, which Everyone TV described as a significant development in widening availability and ensuring audiences could access free TV into the future; Reuters reported at the time that Freely offered around 70,000 hours of on-demand content. Expansion continued in 2025: by May of that year Everyone TV announced partnerships involving Titan OS, TP Vision's Philips televisions and JVC models sold through Currys, and said Freely had signed deals with brands representing half of the UK television market, joining a list that by then included Amazon Fire TV, Bush, Hisense, METZ, Panasonic, Sharp, TCL, TiVo, Toshiba and VIDAA sets.
Content and Channel Line-Up
Freely's content is the combined output of Britain's public service broadcasters: live channels and catch-up libraries from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5, with STV and S4C extending the offer in Scotland and Wales. Children's channels such as CBBC and CBeebies are in the line-up whether the set is connected by broadband alone or hybrid, and a hybrid aerial connection adds further free channels such as POP and Ketchup TV. Ahead of launch, Everyone TV also announced work with UKTV to bring that broadcaster's portfolio of free channels — including Dave, Drama, Yesterday and W — to the service via broadband, widening the offer beyond the shareholders' own channels.
The emphasis throughout is on British content. Everyone TV's stated aim is that every viewer should be able to share in the best of British ideas and creativity on television, with a free, aggregated live experience that champions domestic programming — a deliberate contrast with the global catalogues of subscription streamers, in which British public service programmes compete for attention alongside worldwide output.
New Features: Freely Next
In May 2025 Everyone TV unveiled further features under a Freely Next update, developing the platform's live and on-demand search. A Backwards TV Guide and a feature called Never Miss were announced for launch in June 2025, joining the previously announced My List function, which lets viewers keep track of programmes they want to watch. The direction of development is consistent: closing the gap between the convenience features audiences expect from subscription streaming — personal lists, catching up backwards through the guide, reminders so programmes are not missed — and the free public service platform, so that choosing free television does not mean accepting a poorer experience.
Why Freely Matters
Freely represents a collective decision by Britain's public service broadcasters that the future of free television must be built together or not at all. Individually, each broadcaster's player competes with Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon; together, through Freely, they recreate the shared front door that Freeview provided for the terrestrial era. The service preserves the principles that have defined British free TV since Freeview's launch in 2002 — no subscription, universality, prominence for public service content — while detaching them from the aerial for the first time.
Its success is not guaranteed. It depends on manufacturers continuing to build it in, on viewers choosing Freely sets, and on the broadcasters' willingness to keep cooperating while also growing their own players. But as a statement of intent, Freely is unambiguous: the organisations that created British television intend its free, universal form to survive the transition to broadband, and they have built the platform — launched on 30 April 2024, expanded across half the television market within a year — to carry it there.
