When the full digital switchover happens, will TV planners still move Corrie for big sporting events, or will they simply put the sport on a different, free-to-view channel?

I hope they move it to ITV 11+1, Corrie is rubbish!

Seriously, there are a number of possibilities at DSO (digital switch over). The way to think of it is the digital channels are basically a pipe, down which a certain amount of TV can be squeezed. You can trade off between more channels at low quality (e.g. you may see slight blockiness sometimes on E4+7 ITV3+6), or fewer channels at higher quality.

The big issue will be what becomes of the extra space in that frequency range at DSO. It looks likely that the frequencies will be auctioned off as our Great Leader did with the 3G phone spaces.

1: Very few extra channels (because mobile phone companies etc win most of the frequency space freed up by DSO)
2: A few extra channels, plus some high definition channels (HD takes up loads of bandwidth)
3: A large increase in the number of channels- resulting in ITV4+1, BBC News 24+1, Channel 5+5 and so on.

I reckon we'll see a mix, a few HD channels, some extra catch-up style channels and some bandwidth being used to allow mobile phones to do more funky media stuff.

Once everyone's got digital, there'll be no great reason to put the footy on instead of Corrie, one or the other will be put on ITV 27 instead of the hopeless rubbish that clags up these channels such as 10 year old repeats of Airline and Trisha.