[Tola]

They have an 'end of an era' send off programme like all the channels, I haven't seen it but I'd imagine it has random hits from the 4music era rather than The Hits tho. Also The Hits began and ended in the 00s.

From looking, the farewell programme for 4music is indeed from when it launched and not focused on its predecessor, titled as "4music: End of an Era!":
youtu.be 

[LargelyALurker]

You're right.
The Hits was 2002-2008. That era of the channel, seemingly forgotten.

I’m sure I’m not the only person who loved The Hits when they first got Freeview - it really was well put together, with the theme weekends and different strands. Of course, when it launched, YouTube didn’t exist and fast internet connections were not common!

Interesting that it shared a brand with ‘The Hits’ radio station, which has ultimately become ‘Hits Radio’, taking over from heritage FM brands in much of England.

[frasergj]

The channels seem to be running farewell promos - saw one on The Box earlier and just caught one on 4Music between music videos (both times around :55 past the hour, not sure if that's just a coincidence though)

Both seem to be compilations of music shown on the channel over the years with a VO thanking viewers for watching and glimpses of previous channel logos.

The Box one has mocked up "Now Playing" text with selection numbers for some of the main tracks which is a nice touch.

[lhx1985]

I’m sure I’m not the only person who loved The Hits when they first got Freeview

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.

[Dan]

The channels seem to be running farewell promos - saw one on The Box earlier and just caught one on 4Music between music videos (both times around :55 past the hour, not sure if that's just a coincidence though)

Both seem to be compilations of music shown on the channel over the years with a VO thanking viewers for watching and glimpses of previous channel logos.

The Box one has mocked up "Now Playing" text with selection numbers for some of the main tracks which is a nice touch.

I just managed to capture this from Zattoo. Such a lovely little montage. Have to admit it made me feel quite emotional. I never had cable or Sky growing up (not just you Rishi!) and used to really look forward to visiting my late Nan’s house every weekend in the late 90s where she would always put The Box on for me all day. Seeing the little mock up with the selection numbers unlocked that lovely little memory.

youtu.be 

[James2001]

Dug out another video, a few seconds of a "please stand by" caption, followed by the screen showing selection numbers:

up.metropol247.co.uk 

I presume this caption was put on when the system was being updated. I think the time I recorded this was the only time I ever saw it, they always updates on Fridays, and I was usually never at home then, even during school holidays, as my mum worked that day and we had to go to our grandparents.

I presume the full screen selection screen was something to show while laserdiscs were being cued up, but also, on our cable company at least, the selection captions at the bottom of the screen during videos didn't appear until 1998, so it would also have been the only real chance to see them. Sometimes it could be on screen for several minutes at a time, in total silence as you can see here, which wouldn't stand today! That particular design of background was only introduced in 1998 as well. Again, this is the only proper recording I have of said screen (bar some split second shots at the end of some other songs I recorded).

[Dan]

Here's a good 3 hours worth of nostalgic The Box from December 1999 which I found on Archive.org. (may need a VPN connected to US for fast playback)

archive.org 

The Box Dec 1999 Vhs Sd : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archiv…
the box uk channel music
  Source: archive.org

[James2001]

Wonderful, not long after the revamp as well.

Big Boys Don't Cry by Lolly is one of the videos that has The Box's logo inserted into it, as I mentioned before (you can see it just after the 43 minute mark), as is Keep on Movin' by Five, at the 2:16 mark (the Box Logo was also at the start of that video, but that's cut off here).

Rather sadly though, it just seems to be videos, and none of the surrounding presentation, like the videos I used to make. Funnily enough probably 85% of the songs here are on the videos I made around the same time.

You can see on there some of what I mentioned in how the Sky/national version of the channel used to cut off the starts of some videos, and as a result the live generated captions with the selection number were out of sync with the burnt-in song titles. Our local cable company's version of The Box (which was closed down around September/Ocotber 99) never used to do this.

This has the edited version of TLC's Unpretty video, with Chilli's bit cut down to remove some of the cosmetic surgery scenes, and Left Eye's bit cut entirely, I didn't see the uncut version shown until around a decade later. Also they'd switched to the finished version of the Will2K version by this point, for a while they were running a version with unfinished effects (which also had the 80s date shown as 1986 rather than 84).

Always appreciated them showing you the video directors too, I got to recognise their styles and the sorts of music they directed, a shame that went when they moved to the new system in 2000 (then the record company names went the following year).

In early 2000, the playlist graphics at the bottom of the screen during videos changed from the two-tier multi coloured one, to a single tier white one (that alternated between song details and phone numbers), and the viewers selections were stacked on the right hand side of the screen rather than across the bottom- that style was kept on (but in a better font!) when they moved to the new system at the end of the year.

Seeing Lyte Funky Ones (LFO) appearing on the playlist banner- that's a band with a tragic story in the years since.

[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.

[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