[Tola]

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.

I seem to recall TMF also jumping into the late night phone in quiz show trend at one point with Pop the Q, which itself was owned by Ostrich media (who also owned Nation 247/Quiz Nation at the time) - so more often than not you would see the presenters from Quiz Nation appear on the show (Ellie Dible here for example below):
youtu.be