Disney Channel joins Sky's picnic

Disney Channel has joined the lineup for Picnic TV, Sky's proposed new pay-TV service for DTT.

The broadcaster will launch a channel offering a mix of programming from the main Disney Channel service and its younger stablemate Playhouse Disney. Broadcast hours will be 6am to 6pm daily.

Picnic - subject to approval from Ofcom, following a public consultation that ends next month - will offer subscribers premium Sky content, including Sky Sports 1, Sky Movies and Sky One. Disney Channel is the first third-party broadcaster to join Picnic, although Sky intends to add a third-party factual channel - rumoured to be Discovery - to the lineup in the near future.

The service will initially comprise three MPEG2 video streams but will switch to MPEG4 and offer a fourth stream carrying Sky News 24/7 if Ofcom approves use of the more bandwidth-efficient compression format.