There was an offshoot from Performance called Performance MainStreet that lasted just under a year. It was replaced by Rock on TV, that lasted just over five months.
(27-07-2022, 07:52 PM)James2001 Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 07:45 PM)eggsontoast Wrote: [ -> ]The only BSB channel that remains on-air is now known as Sky Sports!
Isn't one of the Sky Cinema channels basically a descendent of BSB's Movie Channel too? Though there's been so much rebranding and rearranging of those channels over the years it's probably hard to keep track of which one it is now.
Yes, essentially. Though I don't know the ins and outs of how it is all organised internally. As you'll remember, you could subscribe to Sky Movies, The Movie Channel, or both (and get Sky Movies Gold and the Disney Channel if you had both). I believe that arrangement continued throughout the different guises of Sky Movies up to and including the early days of the genre era.
(27-07-2022, 06:58 PM)JK1985 Wrote: [ -> ]The Paranormal Channel, launched by Most Haunted creators Yvette Fielding and Karl Beattie on June 9th 2008.
It was filled with imported paranormal programming, including repeat runs of ITV Strange But True series and Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World.
The channel also had home produced shows from Antix Productions (Yvette and Karl's production company) with spin offs from Most Haunted.
The used to have round table discussion shows, which looked like it was filmed at a back office of Antix Productions, it made GB News looked professional.
The channel failed to gain an audience. Even though by 2008 Most Haunted and Most Haunted Live were pulling in millions of viewers on Living TV, their own channel scraped a few thousand. They needed the backing of a channel like Living TV to survive.
In August 2009 it was rebranded as The Unexplained Channel, but this was the kiss of death for it, as the channel gradually cut back its hours, from being 24 hours a day to around just 5 hours per day.
The channel finally ended by the end of 2009, with the channel number slot on Sky handed to Information TV.
For some reason my parents watched this channel
a lot while it was on air, so I was under the impression that it was decently popular and surprised when it rebranded/closed. Hearing the context that it actually didn't do well at all... honestly makes that brief period in 2008 a lot funnier in retrospect
(27-07-2022, 07:58 PM)Kojak Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 07:52 PM)James2001 Wrote: [ -> ]Isn't one of the Sky Cinema channels basically a descendent of BSB's Movie Channel too? Though there's been so much rebranding and rearranging of those channels over the years it's probably hard to keep track of which one it is now.
Yes, essentially. Though I don't know the ins and outs of how it is all organised internally. As you'll remember, you could subscribe to Sky Movies, The Movie Channel, or both (and get Sky Movies Gold and the Disney Channel if you had both). I believe that arrangement continued throughout the different guises of Sky Movies up to and including the early days of the genre era.
I believe the old BSB Movie Channel became Sky Movies Screen 2 which eventually became what is now Sky Cinema Premiere.
(27-07-2022, 08:35 PM)Neil Jones Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 07:58 PM)Kojak Wrote: [ -> ]Yes, essentially. Though I don't know the ins and outs of how it is all organised internally. As you'll remember, you could subscribe to Sky Movies, The Movie Channel, or both (and get Sky Movies Gold and the Disney Channel if you had both). I believe that arrangement continued throughout the different guises of Sky Movies up to and including the early days of the genre era.
I believe the old BSB Movie Channel became Sky Movies Screen 2 which eventually became what is now Sky Cinema Premiere.
I am going to be SUPER pedantic (apologies in advance!) and say that whilst you are broadly right, I think it was actually Sky Movies Gold that ultimately became Sky Cinema Premiere. I say this because I remember that when the channels were first reorganised into genres, it was Premiere that was the bonus channel only available to those who had the full movie package.
(27-07-2022, 07:49 PM)Kojak Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 07:37 PM)Spencer Wrote: [ -> ]I remember Boots used the URL wellbeing.com at the time, but it didn’t last long.
I remember that! I don't remember the Wellbeing channel (don't think it was ever on cable, was it?) but I definitely do remember the wellbeing.com URL. A quick Wayback Machine search suggests it remained in use until April 2003, at which point it began to redirect to boots.com.
I seem to remember the boots.com url was owned by a car garage company or similar so the domain wasn't nessercerily a direct tie in with the TV channel. Did Wellbeing TV replace Shop! Or am I mis-remembering?
Carlton Food Network rebranded as TasteCFN when it tied up with Sainsburys I dint think that lasted long.
(27-07-2022, 06:53 PM)telebox2001 Wrote: [ -> ]That's the first I've heard about it. Ah, the interactive card. Wonder what was the initial idea?
Part of the early financing for the Sky digital boxes, because they were new and terribly expensive, was that they were heavily subsidised by the "Open..." consortium who were hoping that these set top boxes would become a major gateway for home banking, online shopping, etc.
As such the 'interactive' card slot was intended to be Mondex compatible (i.e. chip-and-pin long before they called it that) and backers like HSBC and others each contributed what became known as the 'interactive discount' which brought the cost of a Sky digital box down to something which people were hopefully more able to afford and more likely to be interested in. (This is also a large part of the reason why people were expected/required to keep their box attached to the telephone line - so that the convenient on-screen interactive services would be easy to discover and use without any friction.)
(27-07-2022, 08:46 PM)Ben Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 07:49 PM)Kojak Wrote: [ -> ]I remember that! I don't remember the Wellbeing channel (don't think it was ever on cable, was it?) but I definitely do remember the wellbeing.com URL. A quick Wayback Machine search suggests it remained in use until April 2003, at which point it began to redirect to boots.com.
I seem to remember the boots.com url was owned by a car garage company or similar so the domain wasn't nessercerily a direct tie in with the TV channel. Did Wellbeing TV replace Shop! Or am I mis-remembering?
You are correct, except it was an ISP that owned the domain:
https://web.archive.org/web/200102261459...boots.com/
By 2002 Boots the chemist had gotten hold of the address, and of course a year later wellbeing.com began to redirect to it.
Quote:Carlton Food Network rebranded as TasteCFN when it tied up with Sainsburys I dint think that lasted long.
About six months. Quite a lot of programmes on there that have never been repeated since, including a couple of Alan Coxon programmes, and a celebrity cooking show called Can't Stand the Heat, hosted by Anna Maria Ashe (of London Tonight fame).
(27-07-2022, 08:57 PM)Aplus1 Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 06:53 PM)telebox2001 Wrote: [ -> ]That's the first I've heard about it. Ah, the interactive card. Wonder what was the initial idea?
Part of the early financing for the Sky digital boxes, because they were new and terribly expensive, was that they were heavily subsidised by the "Open..." consortium who were hoping that these set top boxes would become a major gateway for home banking, online shopping, etc.
As such the 'interactive' card slot was intended to be Mondex compatible (i.e. chip-and-pin long before they called it that) and backers like HSBC and others each contributed what became known as the 'interactive discount' which brought the cost of a Sky digital box down to something which people were hopefully more able to afford and more likely to be interested in. (This is also a large part of the reason why people were expected/required to keep their box attached to the telephone line - so that the convenient on-screen interactive services would be easy to discover and use without any friction.)
Do you remember the keyboards that came out alongside digital satellite and cable?
https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/...71-00F.jpg
I remember that much like Sky, Telewest hoped to become a hub for online shopping and so forth. I was a bit young, so never used anything like that myself, but I do remember my grandad had a Telewest keyboard. Sky made one as well:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/OwkAAOSwC...-l1600.jpg
(27-07-2022, 08:31 PM)Lynetwork Wrote: [ -> ] (27-07-2022, 06:58 PM)JK1985 Wrote: [ -> ]The Paranormal Channel, launched by Most Haunted creators Yvette Fielding and Karl Beattie on June 9th 2008.
It was filled with imported paranormal programming, including repeat runs of ITV Strange But True series and Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious World.
The channel also had home produced shows from Antix Productions (Yvette and Karl's production company) with spin offs from Most Haunted.
The used to have round table discussion shows, which looked like it was filmed at a back office of Antix Productions, it made GB News looked professional.
The channel failed to gain an audience. Even though by 2008 Most Haunted and Most Haunted Live were pulling in millions of viewers on Living TV, their own channel scraped a few thousand. They needed the backing of a channel like Living TV to survive.
In August 2009 it was rebranded as The Unexplained Channel, but this was the kiss of death for it, as the channel gradually cut back its hours, from being 24 hours a day to around just 5 hours per day.
The channel finally ended by the end of 2009, with the channel number slot on Sky handed to Information TV.
For some reason my parents watched this channel a lot while it was on air, so I was under the impression that it was decently popular and surprised when it rebranded/closed. Hearing the context that it actually didn't do well at all... honestly makes that brief period in 2008 a lot funnier in retrospect
I think both Yvette and Karl felt there was appetite for more paranormal programming in 2008, and also it was interesting from people I have spoken to that in the summer of 2008, Yvette and Karl hinted that if their new Paranormal Channel was a success, Most Haunted and Most Haunted Live could leave Living TV and move to their own channel.
This didn't go down well with Living TV who poured in millions of pounds of resources into both shows, especially Most Haunted Live, which by 2008 was multiple night extravaganzas, even coming from locations abroad.
Now Yvette and Karl are relegated to YouTube, as Really TV who rebooted the show, with bought in newly made editions from 2014, ended their partnership with Antix Productions in 2019, after a lot of bad publicity, especially considering the production quality had dropped and the content was full to the brim of faked events.
Maybe the 2014-2019 era of Most Haunted on Really TV is what the Paranormal Channel version of their show could have been, if they had have left Living TV.
Argos TV
Jackpot TV (had a placeholder up for most of its life)
iBuy
Shop at Bid (replaced bid tv)
Shopping TV
Cambridge TV on local Freeview (lasted just over a year before the slot was sold to That's TV)
L!VE TV (when it returned briefly to Sky in the early 00s showing old archive shows like Spanish Archer, Indecent Proposals, Carnal Knowledge, that soap opera based in Canary Wharf and Lie Detector).
CMT (pulled out of Europe after a few years in the 90s).
(27-07-2022, 09:24 PM)Worzel Wrote: [ -> ]iBuy
Anyone here remember its precursor, Auction World TV? It ran for a few years, but was shut down after being fined nearly half a million pounds by Ofcom for selling dodgy goods that were ridiculously overpriced. It made Watchdog and everything.
Who do we think holds the record then for the shortest lived channel?
(27-07-2022, 08:57 PM)Kojak Wrote: [ -> ]Do you remember the keyboards that came out alongside digital satellite and cable?
https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/pict/...71-00F.jpg
I remember that much like Sky, Telewest hoped to become a hub for online shopping and so forth. I was a bit young, so never used anything like that myself, but I do remember my grandad had a Telewest keyboard. Sky made one as well:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/OwkAAOSwC...-l1600.jpg
ON digital / ITV digital had them too. Aside from “on net” which was an entirely separate STB and keyboard that did the whole TV internet thing, they also offered a remote for “on mail”, which was available via the main TV box. I seem to remember a promotion where they were just giving them away, I didn’t have an onmail account but I ended up with one.
Telewest and the other cable companies at least had a better chance of making a go of it, since their cable networks were mostly two way and always on so there were no dialup call charges to worry about & much faster to boot
(27-07-2022, 09:42 PM)Brekkie Wrote: [ -> ]Who do we think holds the record then for the shortest lived channel?
Are we including or excluding pop-up channels? I suppose that since they occupied transponder space and had a proper EPG entry, Sky News Raw (10 hours) and Sky News Brexit Free (16 days) are contenders?