MA
I suspect your world, like mine, was very different back then.
Gavin Esler was sitting in on the One O’Clock News and the top story was the epidemic sweeping the country (foot and mouth disease) and Martine Croxall was on UK Today opts (remember those?).
We had people in our BBC One balloon idents… but no sign of dancers yet.
CBBC was still asking for stamped self-addressed envelopes for factsheets.
Blue Peter had a tour of the BBC Weather Centre discussing climate change with Helen Young.
Everyone’s social distancing nightmare Robert Kilroy-Silk was sitting on people’s laps and inviting future contributors to call the national rate telephone number.
Weekend Watchdog featuring Matt Alright and rows of shiny translucent iMac computers looked at the holidays ruined by the closure of the countryside.
So perhaps some things have changed more than others!
Forgive the indulgence but looking back at what was on telly that day has made me come to realise how much I’ve grown up with this community.
I’ve only just discovered that you can go back and view every post from the very beginning - which is testament to Asa’s commitment to the community given the iterations of Ikonboard, phpBB and custom scripting that the site has went through! My first official post was querying the little red dot next to each person’s username – I hadn’t used a forum before, nor a spellchecker going by some of my early posts.
The UKTV network relaunch of 2001 was probably the first time I felt part of a community – us all eagerly anticipating relaunch morning and posting horrendous quality screencaps from Hauppauge TV cards. Other stand-out moments from the early days include the launch of The World Today on News 24, the BBC One dancers, the mod election (
), secret links for BBC World via PM and numerous Eurovision Song Contest threads.
My brief spell as ‘webmaster’ of Metropol helped me appreciate the work that goes into maintaining a forum community. MP had fairly innocuous debates which paled in significance to some of the bizarre (and in some cases defamatory) discussions that cropped up on here. Running a forum can be like leaving a cat in the same room as your new sofa – you never know what you are going to come back to. So hats off to Asa for steering the ship for twenty solid years.
Like many of the original crew, I don’t post as much these days, but continue lurk. Life has a habit of getting in the way… indeed the most startling revelation that I have just made is that my son is a year shy of being the same age as I was when this place launched.
Here’s to many great memories
Thank you Asa, thank you all.
Martin
Founding member
…and finally
Friday 23rd of March 2001… I had to check my own profile to see when I joined. I remember coming home from school, “logging on” to TV Home and discovering this shiny new “forum”.I suspect your world, like mine, was very different back then.
Gavin Esler was sitting in on the One O’Clock News and the top story was the epidemic sweeping the country (foot and mouth disease) and Martine Croxall was on UK Today opts (remember those?).
We had people in our BBC One balloon idents… but no sign of dancers yet.
CBBC was still asking for stamped self-addressed envelopes for factsheets.
Blue Peter had a tour of the BBC Weather Centre discussing climate change with Helen Young.
Everyone’s social distancing nightmare Robert Kilroy-Silk was sitting on people’s laps and inviting future contributors to call the national rate telephone number.
Weekend Watchdog featuring Matt Alright and rows of shiny translucent iMac computers looked at the holidays ruined by the closure of the countryside.
So perhaps some things have changed more than others!
Forgive the indulgence but looking back at what was on telly that day has made me come to realise how much I’ve grown up with this community.
I’ve only just discovered that you can go back and view every post from the very beginning - which is testament to Asa’s commitment to the community given the iterations of Ikonboard, phpBB and custom scripting that the site has went through! My first official post was querying the little red dot next to each person’s username – I hadn’t used a forum before, nor a spellchecker going by some of my early posts.
The UKTV network relaunch of 2001 was probably the first time I felt part of a community – us all eagerly anticipating relaunch morning and posting horrendous quality screencaps from Hauppauge TV cards. Other stand-out moments from the early days include the launch of The World Today on News 24, the BBC One dancers, the mod election (
), secret links for BBC World via PM and numerous Eurovision Song Contest threads.
My brief spell as ‘webmaster’ of Metropol helped me appreciate the work that goes into maintaining a forum community. MP had fairly innocuous debates which paled in significance to some of the bizarre (and in some cases defamatory) discussions that cropped up on here. Running a forum can be like leaving a cat in the same room as your new sofa – you never know what you are going to come back to. So hats off to Asa for steering the ship for twenty solid years.
Like many of the original crew, I don’t post as much these days, but continue lurk. Life has a habit of getting in the way… indeed the most startling revelation that I have just made is that my son is a year shy of being the same age as I was when this place launched.
Here’s to many great memories
Thank you Asa, thank you all.
