[Neil Jones]

I always felt one of the mistakes Big Centre TV made early on - asides not being seemingly ready for launch - was going too heavy on TV nostalgia, whether it was buying up Crossroads episodes or churning out stuff like The David Hamilton Show.

Probably would've been great for a Talking Pictures-type operation, but not when you're supposedly running a low budget local channel. There was some worthwhile stuff but I suspect it was fuelled by more than a little self indulgence on Kaleidoscope's part (as much as they otherwise do good archive work)

In fairness Kaleidoscope were caught on the hop, because the only reason they ended up with the licence at all was because the original winner, City8, went out of business, and Kaleidoscope had to cobble it together quickly in something like three months, whereas the original winner had had something like two and a half years.

Mind you it looked like ATV/Central in the ident they had, and IIRC they had some ex ATV/Central staff as well.

City 8 (which started as City TV) promised the earth and then some more:

We will be focusing on local news and current affairs which includes business news. We will also have a schedule of local arts, entertainment and lifestyle programming and local sports programmes balanced with acquired, commissioned and advertiser-funded programming.

Although as things panned out it probably wouldn't have made any difference to the eventual outcome, it would have either become a TalkTV simulcast or the That's route.