[James2001]

In the early 00s, when they first moved to a new system and it crashed regularly, by noting what was being requested after a reboot you could see the songs were indeed played in the order people phoned in, albeit if a song was already in the queue, it wouldn't be queued again until it had been played no matter how many times it was selected again, so it was at least reasonably representative of what people were requesting... as long as it didn't crash again. Though every time it crashed, as happened often during the early 00s, the previous queue was wiped and it started from scratch. And also they sometimes went to a backup system (which you could tell by the colours of the captions being different), but the phone lines were usually still connected to the primary system (while the backup system ran a pre-programmed playlist, which looped back and played the same songs in the same order again if it rebooted or was left for long enough), so while you were still paying to make a selection, it obviously had no effect on what appeared on air, which would also have been a scandal a few years later

Whether that's how it worked on the old laserdisc system pre-2000, or later in the channels' lives though, I can't say. As I said, I did read somewhere that towards the end of the request era, it wasn't a jukebox, they just looked at what was being selected and how often and used that as a guide for planning the playlists... though whether that was true or not, I don't know.

But it's no wonder the selection aspect vanished promptly when the premium rate scandals erupted.

Related, can anyone remember the old laserdisc video jukeboxes of the 80s and 90s? There used to be one in the foodball in Butlins in Skegness in the early-mid 90s, and there was one in the hotel we stayed in in Spain in mid-1999 (albeit it hadn't been updated in around 18 months at that point), both Pioneer LaserJuke branded. Den briefly had one in the Vic in EastEnders in the late 80s before the customers said they didn't like it and it was gone after a couple of weeks