[VMPhil]

Well, I don’t think anyone would disagree with you. They were garish and cheap looking at the time, and still look like that today!

This was when Stuart Murphy had taken over and was transforming the channel from more of a side channel to BBC One and Two to a channel aimed specially at young people.

He clearly wanted to make his stamp on the channel, and this must have been the quickest and cheapest way to do so.

That would have been more acceptable if it didn’t then take a whole year for a proper new look, the actually very good orange cubes look, to appear.

However, at the same time, the BBC were struggling to get approval from the government to replace Choice with BBC Three. It’s possible they wanted to just wait until Three launched, but it took so long that they went ahead and gave Choice a new look anyway.

But the problem is that it made Choice look really poor next to ITV2 and E4, and the ratings reflected that.