[James2001]

So it had local variations on cable when it launched?

Yep, that's how it was run for the first few years. I know The Box used to run during the downtime of Granada Plus for a while, pre-Sky Digital,, though not sure whether they relayed a cable company's or it was a version run just for that. The single national version launched with Sky Digital, and all the local cable versions slowly switched to that over the course of a couple of years. I'm not sure when the last one closed down, but ours did in the autumn of 1999. When I used to use the forums on The Box's website, I gathered there was at least one local version still running (from the laserdisc system) in late 2000 (even after the national version had switched to the new system), but probably didn't last long after that.

Worth remembering in the 80s and early 90s it was quite common for cable channels to be locally run, the likes of Bravo for example were run through tapes sent out to the cable companies who played them. I think HVC was still doing that into the early 00s.