Channel Four 7

Sitting at the FT Digital Media conference listening to Channel 4 announce Channel 4/7, essentially a catch up TV service. The killers USP apparently is that it will guide people to things to watch via...social media (cue buzzy froth stage left)

Its still vapourware, there’s no current launch date, but CEO David Abraham did say that it would be rolled out across all major TV latforms later in 2012.

With so much choice out there, viewers are increasingly saying they sometimes just miss the best stuff, despite their PVR and VOD. 4seven will give viewers more chances to catch the most popular and talked about Channel 4 shows from the last seven days."

The downside of a social media based recommendation system is, like Google links, you get a lowest common denominator recommendation cycle, which loses your high end and most Ad-desirable customers) a point made yesterday by Chad Hurley where he noted that you do have to add variability to social choice.

(Later, when questioned Abraham said selection would not be by algorithm, so it seems like they have not drunk all the Kool Aid)