Vintage TV

Any thoughts on this channel after a few weeks?

Seen the odd Concert prog, Duran Duran, Spandau, Steve Harley, but nothing to write home about.

SKY plussed a 'Vintage Video' compilation, for filling in gaps on my DVDs. Choice not too bad IMO, compared to the other music channels.

Presenters seem to be of the 'In case you wondered happened to us after our previous brush with fame/Thought they were dead' variety, with the likes of Kid Jensen, Rick Wakeman, Kim Wilde, Ed 'Stewpot' Stewart, Tony Blackburn & Sally James!

Surprised 'Diddy' David Hamilton ain't popped up, or is he too busy syndicating around various local UK radio stations?

As a fan of all things vintage and weird and stuff, I think this channel's great. I particularly like the way they make music videos for old songs out of random BFI archive clips cheesily associated with the song title. For example, 'Frankie Lymon's Why Do Fools Fall In Love' with gay birds(!) and groups of teenagers doing the jitterbug in Blackpool Tower ballroom circa 1956.

One thing I've noticed over the last few days is that they've moved from quite a varied schedule towards a very repetitive schedule, and they're now repeating the same weekly schedule.

With "Me and Mrs Jones" for example, over the last couple of weeks, they've been repeating previous episodes, and over the next month or so, it looks like they're just showing repeats of the Rick Wakeman episode. It's a 13 part series, and they've only shown about 5 episodes so far.

Another example is Vintage Documentaries. They're now just showing the Jethro Tull and Billy Joel programmes.

They recently reported a viewing figures rise of 47% since they launched, and yet a schedule like this can only lead to a decline in viewing figures.

http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/1036461/Vintage-TV-hires-Davis-commercial-director/

Those "vintage videos", which I caught recently, are a smart idea, especially if they match the song lyric or theme - the only one I recall off the top of my head is clips of film cameras to "Memories are Made of This" by Dean Martin; there's also one with a montage of Diana Dors clips which I think uses "Dream Lover" by Bobby Darin.

Although hardly original, didn't the BBC do a series in the 1980s marrying songs from the 1950s and the 1960s? Possibly "The Golden Picture Show" or a similar title with DLT hosting?

Yes, DLT did "The Golden Oldie Picture Show". One website says it was on 1985-1988. The basic idea was to create music videos for hits released before music videos existed... It was a lot of schmaltzy vaseline-on-the-lens sort of stuff as far as I recall...

Despite the various problems, viewers seem to love it, weirdly my local pub had it on the big screens instead of background music.