Best of Europe's TV for Britain?

whilst flicking through some old newspaper cuttings i came accross the following story, from the daily mail on 1 june 1983

http://www.gorillaenterprises.co.uk/upload/uploadFiles/dailymail1983.jpg

what on earth were they talking about? a fifth channel made up of european content? tv-am replaced by european stuff?

Well, TV channels don't get more European than RTL do they?

Instead we got channel 5, which showed porn for the first five years & imports in the last 5 years, close but wrong continent

Remind me now, which country did Endemol start in ?

I believe this article refers to the planned pan-European satellite channel that would have been a joint venture of various public broadcasting corporations but never got off the ground. As has often been the case with pan-European ideas, it looked great on paper, but it ended up facing just too many political and practical hurdles.

This sounds vaguely reminiscent of the idea behind the Super Channel... possibly?

Well, I believe this project was more ambitious. The plan for it was to become a major pan-European public-service-driven network, showcasing original programming from across Europe, rather than just a run-of-the-mill commercial channel with Europe-wide distribution. I don't know, however, at what stage this project was laid to rest. Maybe someone here can tell us more?

Maybe someone suddenly noticed that we all speak different languages in Europe and so such a channel wouldn't have worked.