Def ll

I don't know but the ultimately stuffy BBC never quite get it right. These days, they think "yoof" is people living solely in rough inner London estates and having that mixed Cockney-come-Caribbean accent that I've never known to exist outside London. Nothing wrong with any of that, but young people in the UK are far more varied than the narrow stereotype the BBC loves so much.

People will be saying the same thing about the Beeb's current "yoof" output in 20 years time. And a further 20 years, they'll be saying the same thing about programmes from that era (if TV continues to exist as it does today). The thing is, it's people who aren't young trying to suss what young people like or relate to, so it'll always be naff to some extent and I doubt it will ever change.

Do the young really want TV for them?

Not in 2013, no.
Young as in under-21? No.
Hence Switch being a total flop.
Hence Trouble disappearing.
Hence T4 disappearing.

Although TOTP Plus (and TOTP @ Play, which replaced The Phone Zone on UK Play/Play UK) retained Paul Smith as executive producer. Smith was a certain Gordon T Gopher and later became the big cheese of CBBC in the 90s/early 00s so it looks like TOTP Plus retained a link of sorts to presentation.

Having said that on the subject of The O Zone - they lost all links to CBBC (when Theakton and Middlemiss started hosting it) around the time presentation programmes was said to have formally folded in the mid-90s, so perhaps it did transfer to the music dept around that point?

DEF II was Janet Street Port-ah wasn't it?

At this time she was obsessed that London was the be all and end all and that kids in Newcastle didn't want to hear what was relevant to them in the North East, but wanted to hear what was going on in 'da city'.

I'm probably wrong again but wasn't DEFII from BBC Manchester? Or did the move of yoof programmes happen afterwards?

Janet Street-Porter thought it was. I clearly remember her being asked what DEF meant in an interview when she Exec-ed it, and that was her answer.

Yep - DEF II came out of Manchester, but not sure how much time Janet Street-Porter spent there. Think it may have been a bit like the National Lottery (technically a BBC Manchester production, but with an office in Shepherds Bush...)

I caught a terrible ITV show (You Saw them Here First) last night where her early appearances featured - doing rubbishy stories for the 6 O'clock Show on LWT. I remembered how hideous she was.

She's only mildly better now, but I wouldn't be asking her what word defines "cool".

Youth programmes were based in London when she began but it moved to Manchester during the run of DEF II and I remember a report saying that JSP had told her staff that if anyone saw her crying they were "tears of joy". But there were loads of programmes from all over the UK during DEF II, as mentioned Reportage came from BBC Manchester (and was filmed there too), Open To Question was from BBC Scotland, Behind The Beat from Pebble Mill and The A-Z Of Belief was a BBC Northern Ireland production.

As a sidenote, some angel has uploaded the 12" and 7" versions of the Network 7 theme music.

Brilliant.

Yep - though it's worth remembering that this was the era when JSP was going out with Normski (who presented Dance Energy) and was clubbing all the time (by all accounts). In the interview I remember her saying that "def" was used in the context of "Something being well def" meaning it was cool...