On the subject of sky, they were preparing their simpsons 10 year special by shoving tons of DISGUSTING vox pops by people from STEPS and other such awful shite people sit there and talk about in a completely not sounding scripted at all way about 10 year old clips of bart ringing up moe and saying a stupid name. They had about 5 of these all over all the simpsons episode. I have never cringed so much in my life..I really cant describe how awful they were... yuck

Sorry, that's what BSB *should* stand for.

Yes, more info.

BSB featured the first televised appearance of Chris Morris' "Feedback Reports". I can actually remember seeing one of these, long before I really knew who he was of course...

>Yes, more info.
>
>BSB featured the first televised appearance of Chris Morris' "Feedback Reports". I can actually remember seeing one of these, long before I really knew who he was of course...

Didn't know about that! Was it a programme in its own right, or part of something else? Top man, me! (I mean, TJ! Ahem.)

No worries, TJustin:

As far as I can recall, these were short inserts shown between other programmes. Possibly. It's all very long ago...

Cheers, TJ. Someone here *must* have known someone with BSB. Where are you? You can't all be at Reading...

Nope, I'm not at Reading. I'm bored, at home in the 'Pool. Bored, because most of my friends are either at Reading or are playing Reading.

Reading looked quite good this year too. Ah well. I'm here still suffering from yesterday's tooth drilling while my partner works a nightshift. Great stuff....

*looks for Blue Jam tape*

>Cheers, TJ. Someone here *must* have known someone with BSB.

There was still a squarial in our road until a few years ago - it may still be there. There is definately one stuck to ShopElectric on the Creagah Road in Belfast.

Something else worth applauding about BSB:

"Goodies" repeats.

(Maybe they were cut, though. Don't know. Still...)

The Goodies repeats had minor cuts, but at least had the decency to leave Graeme's sledgehammering of dead animals from 'Black & White Beauty' intact. Unlike UK Gold. You didn't need to worry about edits with The Galaxy Channel.

Loads of reasons to miss BSB. I loved it at the time, because it used a unique broadcast system that actually had good resolution when beamed into your house. Rather like Betamax, they were technically better but lost to the big money at VHS. In the case of BSB, the merger with Sky killed programme quality stone dead.

Mind you, 'Up Yer News!' was apalling but 'Suggs on Saturday'(Power Station) was good, particularly when Mark E. Smith co hosted one week.

Chris Evans made his televisual start on the Power Station and moved quickly onto ITV after the merger.

I could go on for hours about how great BSB was, but I won't. The book 'Dished!' does just as well to clear up details. I'll try to help with answering any queries you have from that source.

> Rather like Betamax, they were technically better but lost to the big money at VHS.

This Betamax vs. VHS argument is an urban myth. The difference in quality between the two formats was not significant.

http://www.urbanmyths.com/brands_beta.html

> On the subject of sky, they were preparing their simpsons 10 year special
> by shoving tons of DISGUSTING vox pops by people from STEPS and other such
> awful shite people sit there and talk about in a completely not sounding
> scripted at all way about 10 year old clips of bart ringing up moe and
> saying a stupid name.

Did anyone else want to slap the silly bint claiming to be Apu's biggest
fan while she continuously called him "Abu"?

Just me then.

>> Rather like Betamax, they were technically better but lost to the big money at VHS.

My ancient VHS tapes have faulted much quicker and the point I was hurriedly trying to make was that the industry prefer Beta SP.

Intersting stuff about BSB. It's often forgotten that when UK Gold started it was a totally crap channel - cheap looking, intrusive graphics and no proper commercial outcues. I couldn't believe that Thames were involved in running such a pile of garbage. And on top of that it soon became clear that they were cutting BBC shows. The original Young Ones repeats were hacked to ribbons.
Eight years on, UK Gold USUALLY broadcasts programmes uncut, but they did show some cut Young Ones episodes during their "complete series in two nights" runs. UK Play and UK Drama seem to show BBC material uncut, but UK Horizons hardly EVER shows UNCUT material. The most worrying thing is that the BBC does the actual cutting and doesn't seem to give a toss for the poor old viewer who is SUPPOSED to be getting more choice. Fecking hypocrites if you ask me.

What was Rob Newman's Ben Elton routine like? Was it the same as the one he did briefly on MWE?

While I sympathise and agree with Lee Mendham about cutting on UKTV - when he finds a way of showing a 28(?) minute BBC programme in a 24(?) minute commercial TV slot with adverts - and not have to cut it, he should let us all in on the secret!

>While I sympathise and agree with Lee Mendham about cutting on UKTV - when he finds a way of showing a 28(?) minute BBC programme in a 24(?) minute commercial TV slot with adverts - and not have to cut it, he should let us all in on the secret!

Well MAYBE the slots are the wrong size.

Play the tape at 1/6 faster than normal speed
ie. 7/6 X speed = 28/24 X speed
= a 28-minute show goes by in 24-minutes.

Aren't most of the slots on UK Gold 35 or 40 minute anyway?

I don't like the idea of running a programme slightly too fast to make it fit in.. *shudders*. Please don't joke about something like that, some TV exec might think it's a wonderful idea and force it upon us.

It's the eerie blipvert future prophesied by Max Headroom: 23 channels, adverts no one can follow, women with 80s haircuts...

>While I sympathise and agree with Lee Mendham about cutting on UKTV - when he finds a way of showing a 28(?) minute BBC programme in a 24(?) minute commercial TV slot with adverts - and not have to cut it, he should let us all in on the secret!

OK...

1) Show it in a 40-minute slot. UK Gold now does this all the time. Granted it's less convenient for people who want to tape shows on the timer, and they can only show three programmes in two hours instead of four, but I'd rather see them do that than cut out material my licence fee has paid for.
2) If it's a 50-minute show and there's usually only room for 48 minutes, either show fewer trailers or fudge the end time so it overruns a bit. UK Drama and Hallmark frequently do this.
3) Show fewer same day/same week repeats and use the time saved to expand the surrounding time slots.
4) Follow a 50-minute show with a 44-minute US show and treat them as a single 94-minute show for advertising purposes.
All of these devices are used by some channels, but others don't bother. I find it particularly galling that some UKTV channels are willing to find ways of showig stuff uncut while others don't. Satellite/digital TV is becoming a kind of Russian roulette in which you never know which shows will get the editor's 'bullet'.