Shortlived TV channels

[Larry the Loafer]

Reading about the Sky interactive card slot and looking at those keypads just take me back to how truly exciting the digital TV boom felt during the turn of the millennium. Funny really, considering how much it has advanced in the last few years (with apps and streaming, especially) yet all it's done is made it ten times harder to find something you want to settle down and watch!

[PD]

S2, the Scottish version of ITV2

[Brekkie]

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?

Records that won't be beaten, but be interesting to know the record for any channel that didn't quite intend to be off air so quickly.

[Andrew]

There was The Money Channel in the 90's that came from a new studio setup Wapping way - didn't last long...  A bit like the Simply... family of channels. Simply Money, Simply Shopping etc. 
There was also Boots Wellbeing channel that was quite ambitious in live programming all day from Yorkshire TV, maybe lasted 8 weeks?

Simply Money was apparently where Martin Lewis got his first break into TV

The Wellbeing channel lasted much longer than that, wikipedia says 9 months.

[Kojak]

Sky News Raw

That was fantastic. A brilliant insight into what goes on behind the scenes at a news channel. And it was archived on YouTube by, of course, our friend Rob:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghuEZLNmftQ

[IdentFan101]

Nicktoonsters which only ran from August 2008 to July 2009.

Here's the launch promo: https://youtu.be/g9G8kYaM2-U

[moonygiiiuls]

Sony Crime Channel counts? I'm not sure for the main one, I can definitely say that Sony Crime Channel 2 was shortlived, it lasted from the 6th of Febraury to the 15th of November 2018, give or take seven months.

[Andrew]

The Weather Channel lasted for 17 months in 1996-1998

It never really worked on Sky due to it not being regional, and due to it only broadcasting about 5 hours a day. It apparently worked better on cable, and would probably have worked fairly well in the early digital days on Freeview had it come later

It was where we first saw the likes of Carol Kirkwood though

[Neil Jones]

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?

According to a Digital Spy forum post from 2010, Scuzz+1 may hold the record. Scuzz + 1 was reported to have launched by 12:30pm on the Monday, and had been removed from the EPG by 2:45pm on the Friday, meaning the channel lasted around 98 hours.

On topic, Sky2 in its original format lasted less than a year, before it was revived with about four different names before settling on Sky2 again and then morphing into Sky Replay.

[BlueFrog]

Bedroom TV (Big Box TV on Sky I believe), was a small music channel where people could submit their own lip-sync videos of popular music tracks straight from their bedroom (hence the name Bedroom TV), it ran from late July 2007 until August 2008, and it had kind of a rocky end.

As time went on it started focusing less from music videos and more into teleshopping and quiz programming (as Friendly TV sold the channel and it merged with QuizChannel.com), at some point it ended up broadcasting just a white screen with their logo instead of the music videos.

It eventually ended up broadcasting what looked to be live footage of their office with a disclaimer at the bottom saying "We Need Your NEW Clips For Bedroom TV, Fast!". As it turns out, they got into trouble with copyright infringement and their money was running out;

"I spoke to told me that the channel has been off air because they’re having ’legal difficulties’ which she isn’t allowed to discuss with anyone (I’m thinking it’s probably funding or copyright myself) which I said I totally understood it’s just we were all getting really worried and confused and she understood completely and said that the video stream would be back on as usual later on in the week, so our videos that were all on the air anyway are safe, but no new ones will be on for the time being as far as I could gather- they’re just being put on hold as it were until the ’difficulties’ are sorted..."

It was like this throughout June until they started broadcasting music videos again (ironically copyrighted songs!), but that didn't last long when they started broadcasting the office again.

It eventually got replaced on August 2008 by a shopping channel on Sky.

[Mateus Honrado]

Cable Music Channel. Deemed a hopeful opponent to MTV probably only by Ted Turner himself, the channel ultimately closed down just 5 weeks after their launch (26/10-30/11/1984). Very inspiring name, certainly on par to its sister Cable News Network.
https://youtu.be/Yj1lUfCN0BE

And its channel space was eventually bought by MTV to launch VH1.

[johnnyboy]

I also seem to recall a TV channel lasting a day or two dedicated to showing off old TV ads.

Can't remember where I read this (or even whether it's true) but they were pulled off air because the copyright holders of the ad were a bit upset about their content being used without permission.

[Mateus Honrado]

There was The Weather Cast, which only lasted for four days due to Dish Network removing The Weather Channel for their decision to move towards movies and other entertainment programming and after TWC did a U-turn on the decision, Dish Network put the channel back to their lineup and shut down The Weather Cast as a result.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Weather_Cast

[Neil Jones]

I also seem to recall a TV channel lasting a day or two dedicated to showing off old TV ads.

Can't remember where I read this (or even whether it's true) but they were pulled off air because the copyright holders of the ad were a bit upset about their content being used without permission.

-https://tvforum.uk/tvhome/advert-channel-13024 - it ultimately morphed into something else.

[i.h]

Does it count if the channel had an EPG position and (i think) broadcast capacity, but never materialised

In the early days of Freeview I seem to remember a Christian channel that was in that state, but only ever showed “coming soon” until it disappeared