[WillPS]

I certainly did clock up way too many hours in front of The Hits, right from launch week up until it's fate as it was swallowed by 4Music.

It wasn't bad for what was essentially a cut down version of The Box, cobbled together quickly when EMAP and Viacom didn't want the other to be the only game in town on the platform.

Comparing The Hits' MHEG with the Box's Dsat teletext page I remember that the Box ran a selections list of about 80 to 100 tracks, while this would be whittled down to just 40 for the Hits.

The branding was heavily borrowed from EMAP's Big City radio network but with promos and features lifted straight from the Box - including BoxTops.

The graphics were simple, lacked proper anti-aliasing and initially stuttered as they faded on.
The third set was the best - the sparkly ones that were first that looked like they were generated by professional kit.

There were some dubious programmes introduced to the schedule once Freeview was in enough homes to make the channel worthwhile, however. Still not sure how 'The Gimp' made it to air.

Think the heart was pulled out of all of the Box networks channels when they put a stop to video selections though.

This happened around the time that all 'participation TV' and premium rate competitions came under huge scrutiny (thank you GMTV and Blue Peter!), but I think Bauer/Channel 4 over-reacted by pulling video selections all together. After all, they could have just made selections non-premium if that was an issue. It would gave been better TV than the endless rotation of countdowns or the later radio-on-TV format that the channels all seem to have adopted.

I still miss The Hits. TMF too, for that matter.

I've got fond memories of The Hits too. Music video channels was probably the one area which improved between the end of ITV Digital and the start of Freeview - ITV Digital had MTV and PlayUK, both of which were dedicating less-and-less airtime to videos, and Freeview at launch had TMF and The Hits, which played videos all day (aside from teleshopping).

I don't remember BoxTops airing - I remember seeing a lot of their their own promo reels. I wonder if the restricted number of selection choices was due to them running The Hits off older kit or something? The graphics were very similar to The Box at the time too, just a different font and colours I think. The number of selection choices increased with the graphics refresh that happened around 18 months in.

I'd largely stopped watching by the mid-00s, no memory of 'The Gimp', but I do remember the EMAP-wide late night phone in show was the absolute cheapest and worst one I remember - a solo presenter, same poor sod night-after-night, alone in a featureless 'studio' with no camera operators. I remember reading at the time that it was being shot in eastern Europe, possibly Turkey, and they'd just put the presenter up in a hotel for 10 nights or something daft, then fly them home and get a new one out. I don't think they ever had a spotlight thrown on them but it was certainly amongst the more outrageous in terms of the questions asked as well - 'guess the thing/word', one call through to studio every 3 mins etc. EMAP certainly weren't a totally innocent party in the phone in scandal.

And like I said before the whole request process was massively opaque - it was never particularly clear what an individual selection would do; how many selections would cause a video to be added to the queue? What happened if a request went in for a video already queued up? What happened if the system crashed or was rebooted (which was not an infrequent occurance)?

That was a pretty crap period in the development of Freeview actually, around 2006/7, when there was 2 full time slots occupied by Quiz Call and ITV Play as well as huge chunks of airtime on The Hits, Ftn, ITV1 and ITV2 all dedicated to participation TV. I'm sure there must be some other ones I'm forgetting. Probably for the best that they all went, even if some of it (tho definitely not EMAP's!) was great telly.