The Very Early Telly Thread

Makes me wish we had Sky or cable during the early-mid 90s, we didn't get cable till 1999 though. Still some bizarre stuff around late nights/early mornings even then though, sadly never thought to tape much of it (or keep most of what I did, I wish I had recordings of those little featurettes The Box used to show). I particularly remember Paul King flogging "Superhits of the 90s" every morning before either Eurosport or UK Gold (can't remember which). Only a few months after we got cable they switched to British Eurosport and rather sadly their downtime was just a caption rather than teleshopping.

I recall that Teletext disappeared during these opt outs (anybody remember the In Orbit satellite news on Gold Text?)

Quite why C&W were showing a promo for their phone service to people who almost certainly already had it seems strange.

Remember In Orbit very well was required reading for me as a kid and so was What Satellite.

In the late 1990s, Cartoon Network on Sky analogue closed down at 21:00, and Turner classic movies took over. For a short period before TCM came on air, when Cartoon Network closed down, we had a shot of the Cartoon Network blocks in a darkened room bouncing around everywhere. There was also a trailer for the CN24 hour service, which was initially only available to cable viewers. Cardiff was the first to get the Cartoon network 24 hour service.

On that theme of channels sharing, how about this handover from TCC's equivalent of the Cartoon Network bouncing blocks to Challenge, via a few seconds of TV Travel Shop?



I think originally TCC and Challenge shared an analogue satellite transponder, and when that arrangement changed and Challenge shared with TV Travel Shop the cable provider wanted to stay with the same arrangement so did their own switch at 5pm.

I wish Challenge would go back to the Prize Time format, it was infinitely better than what they do now.

I remember watching this in the kids cinema room at Ikea, which was a bit of a novelty as we didn't have Cartoon Network or any multichannel TV at home.

A personal favourite of mine. As a kid, that music always signalled to me that I was pushing my luck staying up that late. I got a few minutes of WCW before I was rumbled.

I'm pretty sure that music on the Cartoon Network closedown is not library. I'm sure I've heard that same music in the background of a Friends episode.

I don't now if this comes under the subject of this thread but this was one of the nagravision scrambled channels that often had FTA previews. This clip is from a Spanish kids channel Minimax from 1997.

Quite honoured to see a number of my YouTube clips appear in this thread.

In relation to the TCC/Challenge handover you are correct. We had Cable & Wireless, not I'm unsure as to the reasons why but we seemed to have this (commercial-less) version of TCC after the one on Astra closed down. It lasted about six months, I think it originated from CWC itself through some kind of tape. As often the tapes would fail, or even rewind or pause on air. The promos for this version of TCC had no times listed for the shows either. To summarise it was a shambolic operation, hence why it was binned within 6 months. When this happened we did not get the extended version of Trouble, which started when TCC closed down for good.

Cables hand overs were always more jumpy and varied in comparison to that of Sky/Astra.

It's definitely library. It's on the Youth Culture 2 album on the Atmosphere label.

It was also used for wrestling aswell, it gets about that piece.