gottago's posts

…and finally

Farewell for the last time dear TV Forum! It really had been a pleasure talking about television's nichest possible subjects at tedious length with you all! It's been great seeing how quickly the chat has developed over on TV Live so I'm confident we'll all be together again for the long haul.

This has easily been my favourite and most viewed website over the last few years and I really will miss it.

Thank you again Asa for twenty brilliant years. I first discovered it through the brilliant TV Home all those years ago but didn't quite anticipate how much this forum would mean to me and how regularly I would visit. Phenomenal UI and updates by the way, particularly over the last few years.

See you all on the other side x

Big Ends

Wow, that brings back a lot of memories. I used to watch this for hours and hours after secondary school. The same dreadful American sitcoms repeated ad infinitum every weekday! They had some awful shows that had only lasted one season but still they would repeat the full series over and over again. I remember their first big show that they were really trying to push was Commander in Chief (which I think they'd only got because no one else wanted to buy it) but because of their restricted Freeview slot it could only be seen at 5pm in my household. That was when Freeview channels were going for silly money so it's not surprising that they could never secure an all day one.

IIRC the first year of broadcast was completely commercial free for some reason. Though they still did their awful break structure when they had one break after the opening credits and one just before the credits. When they did eventually start showing ads they had the same three commercials on a loop over and over again, I distinctly remember one for the Canary Islands. A bit of an odd channel at times but I loved it.

Big Ends

What channel was that on (or was it just its own channel?), I’ve never heard of it.

Saturday Night Takeaway 2021

Interesting how universally negative the reaction was to that Ross Kemp segment on Twitter. It had all the elements you expect from these surprise hits, but I think it was the fact she didn’t seem that surprised by any of it that made it feel nowhere near as enjoyable as it normally is. And it did go on and on.

Didn’t really get the need for that ‘REC’ graphic on screen when Ross was in the studio. I can kind of understand their thinking behind it being recorded for his ‘show’ but it really didn’t need it and it was distracting.

Didn’t need that full screen image of cat poo in a pizza oven either.

Saturday Night Takeaway 2021

The Ross Kemp segment was pretty hard work. Seemed to last a lot longer than they normally do, or maybe it just felt like it did.

HBO Max

Aren't all HBO originals are on Now TV? Just get a subscription to that. And isn't pretty much all the non-HBO content on HBO Max available in the UK already anyway?

ITV Programming Thread

It won’t be for that, it’s just an internal brand. They wouldn’t sell it on as the company on its own ultimately has no value, it’s a brand that represents a key creatives. If a rival company wanted those creatives they’d just give those people an attractive offer to tempt them over rather than buy the company. A Lifted programme is IP owned by ITV rather than Lifted so wouldn’t be included in any sale.

Virgin Media Ireland to sell its TV stake?

I expect ITV have had plenty of opportunities to buy TV3 in the past and have passed on it, didn't they (or maybe it was Granada) have a stake in it at some point. Let's not forget it was only a few years ago they sold UTV Ireland and with ad markets slowly declining I can't imagine they'd be in a rush to get back into that market. They would surely buy STV before they'd buy TV3.

It also highlights how stupid it was to rebrand the channel in the first place to the cumbersome Virgin Media One. Now any potential buyer will have to add on the expense of rebranding the whole family of channels, assuming they don't rebrand it ahead of a sale to make it a more attractive purchase.

Britains Got Talent Series 9: Now Available On YouTube

Must just be a case of Britbox and ITV Hub not thinking there's enough value in buying it. Given that series 9 is almost 6 years old I would expect it's well out of its licensing deal with ITV. Fremantle must have considered it better value to put it on the official BGT YouTube channel and get a bit of advertising cash out of it than have it sat on the shelf making them nothing. Possibly testing the waters before putting other full series up?

Comic Relief 2021

I remember when David Tennant first hosted Comic Relief and it genuinely felt like a "wow, they've managed to get him to host" moment whereas he doesn't really have that exciting pull now. That part where he was shouting in a classic car before made me yearn for a relevant comic host.

Comic Relief 2021

Yes it is lazy. The repeat of the Normal People/Fleabag sketch (and it is a repeat, if you watched either of those shows there's a pretty strong chance you watched it last year) so early on in the night was very lazy. Could have forgiven it as an 11pm thing which is when they normally repeat everything anyway but not as one of the key moments of the evening.

This Nessun Dorma bit is Children In Need++++++.

Comic Relief 2021

God I'm sick of Zoom on TV.

It does feel like a show from early on in the pandemic, yet it isn't as good as the Big Night In.