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Def ll

Old BBC two 6pm Brands (August 2013)

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WH
Whataday Founding member
Wasn't No Limits a DEFII programme?


No - I'm pretty certain that the creation of DEF II, and the department that ran it under Janet Street-Porter, was a response to No Limits and the perceived "naffness" of similar programmes aimed at the youth audience.


It has been said that Janet Street Porter hated No Limits and it was the first thing to go when she took over.
WE
Westy2
No Limits was a Jonathan King creation wasnt it?

Reckon she knew something we didnt?
NG
noggin Founding member
No Limits was a Jonathan King creation wasnt it?

Reckon she knew something we didnt?


I suspect she knew what a lot of people knew by then...
SW
Steve Williams
It has been said that Janet Street Porter hated No Limits and it was the first thing to go when she took over.


Yes, No Limits finished at the end of 1987 (though the Radio Times billing for the final episode suggests it would be back the following year) and DEF II began in 1988. The No Limits production team (minus Jonathan King) and Jenny Powell were behind UP2U on Saturday mornings in 1988, though, inheriting some of its features, such as referring to videos as "powerplays", whatever they were.

Bit depressed that this forum is generally too young to remember DEF II. It actually got on air really quickly, I think JSP had only joined a few months before, and so in the early months it was a bit half-arsed and inherited a load of previously commissioned stuff, the first few weeks included a terrible indie music show called FSd which JSP hated because it was just the most shameless rip-off of Network 7 imaginable. One interesting thing about the first few weeks is that they had guest continuity announcers - Susie Blake was first, in character from As Seen On TV, which didn't seem a particularly fashionable choice or that relevant for the target audience (I guess the modern equivalent would be Mrs Brown introducing Sweat The Small Stuff or something), then Ruby Wax and then the fifties announcer Peter Haigh, before they just abandoned that idea.

One problem with DEF II is the slot it was in because 6pm on Mondays and Wednesdays meant it was always likely to be interrupted for sport and other events, which it was on regular occasions to the extent that in later years it would go off completely for the summer, which isn't that good if you're trying to create a proper brand. And it more or less petered out before the end, it certainly never had an official last day, but the 6pm slot continued to include teen-orientated shows after it, the Fresh Prince and Rough Guides carried on for many years after it and then you had the likes of The Simpsons and Robot Wars and all that, until BBC3 turned up.

Along simimilar lines, in about 2005 BBC3 did Destination Three for a few months, with a team of presenters linking all the shows for three hours at around 11pm, a bit like T4 but late at night. An Andi Peters production, and it didn't do much though the likes of Rufus Hound, Anita Rani and Justin Lee Collins got some screentime out of it.
GS
Gavin Scott Founding member
Bit depressed that this forum is generally too young to remember DEF II.


Haha, quite!

I remember it well. I actually had in mind that the DEF referred to the letters around the number 2 on a telephone dialler - although the American number convention we have now shows that to be the number 3. Perhaps I invented that idea. "DEF" absolutely was not a word used to mean "cool" or anything else like that.

My pal Esme Frain was one of the finalists to become a presenter of No Limits - I don't recall if Jenny was already the host or whether that was the process that found her. It was covered on TV as an open casting call and videod auditions. Terribly exciting, at the time - she had been in the cast of a show we did in 1986. I believe she's a producer now.

Time for a Facebook search, now I've reminded myself.
SW
Steve Williams
My pal Esme Frain was one of the finalists to become a presenter of No Limits - I don't recall if Jenny was already the host or whether that was the process that found her. It was covered on TV as an open casting call and videod auditions. Terribly exciting, at the time - she had been in the cast of a show we did in 1986. I believe she's a producer now.


That would have been the third and final series in 1987, where they hired fourteen pairs of presenters to co-present individual episodes, as you say they did it all on air and it turns up on clip shows now because Tamsin Outhwaite was one of the auditionees.

It didn't discover Jenny Powell through that process, though, the first series in 1985 was presented by Lisa Maxwell and a man called Jeremy Legge, then Powell and Tony "Postman" Baker did series two - though it was Powell's first TV gig, I think - and then continued into series three with all the regional nabobs.
PC
Paul Clark
Bit depressed that this forum is generally too young to remember DEF II.

I can vividly recall the 1992 look... Maybe some folks just didn't catch the strand? I've no idea what the figures were...

Programme-wise, Snub TV was actually pretty good while it lasted... A lot of my memory - and probably the last - was of BBC 2 showing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in that strand. One programme that I roughly associated with DEF II was the Aussie series Heartbreak High... It's that sort of territory, but unless it overlapped with the last days of the strand, I'm actually not sure if it was ever part of it?

If anything, DEF II stands out because of its branding - despite the original bright, fast style not having much subtlety there, the contrast was a positive -- for late 80s BBC 2 to have featured the programmes without it, in its plain and sober look, would have seemed a bit out of step.

I think DEF II in 1992 had the balance about right in terms of Presentation - a take on BBC 2's identity consistent with the style, while the stings offered up the contrast. Not a complete re-invention; it just refined the original 'Barcode' concept into something that looked and worked better.
SW
Steve Williams
Programme-wise, Snub TV was actually pretty good while it lasted... A lot of my memory - and probably the last - was of BBC 2 showing The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air in that strand. One programme that I roughly associated with DEF II was the Aussie series Heartbreak High... It's that sort of territory, but unless it overlapped with the last days of the strand, I'm actually not sure if it was ever part of it?


No it wasn't, DEF II ended in May 1994 and Heartbreak High started in September 1994. But Tuesday nights for the rest of the nineties were basically DEF II in all but name with The Fresh Prince at six, Heartbreak High at 6.25 and something like Ren and Stimpy or The O Zone at 7.10. Required viewing in my halls of residence.

I was watching clips of The O Zone on YouTube the other week, that used to be a great little show and they had a very broad music policy, there are interviews online with the likes of Holy Bible-era Manics. Made by the presentation department as well, and carried on until 2000 when it was replaced by the inferior Top of the Pops Plus, I always assumed because the music department were wondering why they didn't make it. A very creative department, presentation.
:-(
A former member
That would be 1995 May and June and 1996 Jan - June and again in 1997 for Ren and stimpy. Don't forgot "The Tick" which out at 19.10 on Tuesdays as well

If I remember, Mondays were the Sy-fi, actuality weren't all the other days mainly Star trek and Battlestar and Buck rogues?
GS
Gavin Scott Founding member
That would be 1995 May and June and 1996 Jan - June and again in 1997 for Ren and stimpy. Don't forgot "The Tick" which out at 19.10 on Tuesdays as well

If I remember, Mondays were the Sy-fi, actuality weren't all the other days mainly Star trek and Battlestar and Buck rogues?


Buck Rogue Traders?
MI
Michael
Monday: The Simpsons
Wednesday : Star Trek The Next Generation / Quantum Leap
Thursday : Star Trek DS9
Friday : Star Trek TOS / Stingray / Randall & Hopkirk
WP
WillPS
Was DEF II not considered naff in it's time? Watching the clips on TV Ark (with a little rap about Mission Impossible) made me cringe.

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