L!VE TV
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L!VE TV was a British television station that was operated by MGN on cable television from 15 June 1995 - 5 November 1999. It was later revived for Sky Digital from 2003. In 2006, the new L!VE TV's name was changed to Babeworld to reflect the channel's gradual change of focus towards "adult material".
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[edit] First incarnation (1995-1999)
The channel was proposed by David Montgomery as MGN's first foray into pay television. At its launch in 1995, the station was headed by Kelvin MacKenzie with Janet Street-Porter as Managing Director and a team of young "tellybrats". Street-Porter left after only five months due to repeated clashes with MacKenzie over content and was replaced with Mark Cullen. MacKenzie went on to create a number of programmes that received much media coverage but low viewer figures.
Defiantly cheap and always accused of poor taste, the channel never captured more than 1% of the British television audience under MGN, and at the worst of its fortunes was losing around £7 million a year. It was often described as "tabloid television", in no small part due to its control by MGN and the fact that MacKenzie had formerly been editor of The Sun.
Amongst its better known programmes were Topless Darts (with hilarious voiceover supplied by comedian Jimmy Frinton) and Canary Wharf, a soap opera, which used the station's offices in the Docklands as a set. Other regular features were the weather, read in Norwegian by a blonde model (Eva Bjertnes or Anne-Marie Foss) wearing a bikini , Britain's Bounciest Weather with Rusty Goffe (probably most well known, although uncredited, for his appearance as an Oompa Loompa in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory) who due to his small stature, would bounce on a trampoline while doing the forecast, and the News Bunny, a person in a rabbit suit who would stand behind a newsreader and make appropriate gestures and expressions for each of the items.
A typical early show from the channel was a two-hour afternoon piece based around viewers' submitted wedding videos. By the second week only one video had been sent in, and on phoning the participants in order to have a "live commentary", the presenters were informed that the couple were too busy shopping to be involved.
Shortly before its demise in 1999, it is said that the channel would bid for rights to show the English Premiership, but it is not clear whether this was a publicity stunt or not. By this time, the channel had increasingly moved over to showing soft porn.
[edit] Second incarnation (2003-2006)
In 2003, L!VE TV returned, but now as a free channel on Sky Digital, first on EPG 274, then on 214. Its content was almost entirely archive programming from the old L!VE TV. Then in 2004, following the precedent of competitor channels, its risqué archive late-night offerings were supplemented with banners advertising adult text messaging services.
Towards the end of 2005, the channel's entire evening and late night output was turned over to promoting adult text and phone in services, involving a couple of "glamorous" models gradually stripping down and trying to entice the viewer into phoning or texting the studio. This was under the pretence that the viewer would get to talk to one of the studio guests.
By February 2006, the station's content had dwindled to little other than these shows, and it was moved to the Adult section of Sky's EPG on February 28th, 2006. Two days later, the channel's name changed to "Babeworld", hence ending its links to the former MGN operation entirely.
[edit] 2007
As of Monday 19th February 2007, a number of archive programmes from L!VE TV including The Why Files and Lie Detector are being shown on My Channel, formerly known as Eat Cinema, on Sky channel 199.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- L!VE TV online (Please note that site contains adult material)
