[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 

[James2001]

Just seen The Box showing Drinking in LA, even though it's a song that actually didn't make their playlist despite how high it charted.

They had a few misses like that. Rise by Gabrielle also never made the playlist despite being a chart topper (or The Masses against the Classes by the Manics from the same month).

[TVenthusiasm]

I can only remember one other video that actually had The Box namechecked in the video by the artist (that was "Feel of Fire" by Lucy Skye. a VERY obscure song that I don't even think charted in the top 75, but I remember it getting a fair amount of airplay on the channel at the time... again, the video is on YouTube without The Box plug). There were a few videos in that late 99/early 2000 period that had The Box logo inserted into them (one of them was by Northern Line- who do appear in that video I posted... probably better known when one of their members turned up in (regular) Big Brother several years later), and I have a couple of examples, but they're not particularly interesting- they're just the regular videos with the logo superimposed at some point.

TVmusic just uploaded another one, this time from Allstars*. Unlike the S Club one, where only the channel name and slogan is mentioned, the artist's name is namechecked before The Box is mentioned. Apart from that, and the other 2 songs that had the namecheck, I haven't heard of any other examples

www.youtube.com 

(Namecheck at 4:13)

[James2001]

Not seen anyone mention the Boxtalks yet, I often found them annoying because of how long they were, but some of them were interesting, though you still got bored of them quite quickly because of how often they were shown. Until the spring of 1999, they were something that viewers selected, just like the videos (though the song selection captions didn't appear during them like they did with the music), but after that they were just shown at certain times every day. Was also one of the things whose look was affected by the endless tweaking to the channel's presentation throughout 1999, even getting an entire brand new look (unlike the other "programmes" on the channel which just had tweaks to their existing ones) that only lasted a few months until it was replaced in the November 99 revamp. They ended with the 2001 Box revamp, though the first week of said revamp there was a Toploader feature that wasn't explicitly called a Boxtalk, but still had the band referencing The Box.

After that for a few years we had what was virtually the same thing, but they appeared not on any sort of regular schedule during advert breaks and were called "advertising features" and didn't reference The Box, or any of the other channels- I think they tended to appear on more than one of them (as Kiss and Q had launched the previous year, and Magic, Smash Hits and Kerrang earlier that year).

[frasergj]

Schedules for the final days/hours have started to appear now.

Looks like all the channels are dropping their themed slots and go into a big Closing Party from the 29th - punctuated with their retrospective shows a couple of times a day.

[James2001]

Just put The Box on and seen Buggin'... Which of course I posted a video of Dane Bowers promoting on the channel back in the day.

Are they going to dig up Northern Line next? :-P

[James2001]

The mix of music on The Box the last few weeks has been excellent, makes you feel sad it's closing now... and the channel suddenly becomes good just as it's closing.

There have been a few videos that actually didn't make their playlist back in the day, but that's probably just being anal...

[Brekkie]

Will be interesting to see if their share for this month has gone up. I get closing 4Music (arguably should have happened when E4 Extra launched) and that the Bauer deal has reached it's natural end but feels like its a huge missed opportunity not to pivot the BOX brand to the world of FAST TV considering there seems to be real brand value there - but it's an area where despite the growth of their streaming service C4 seem to be really lagging behind.

[James2001]

I have been really suprised at some of the videos they've been digging up, plenty of stuff I haven't seen in 20+ years and wouldn't have expected to see played again and it's a joy, not just the overplayed a-list hits classic music TV and radio stations usually stick to.

Maybe someone will see there's an audience for this sort of thing, as there isn't really anywhere else doing something similar. It feels as if they've hit a good nostalgia formula completely by accident. The old Chart Show Vault channel's the only thing that really came close... before it filled with sitcoms.

[MajesticBass]

feels like its a huge missed opportunity not to pivot the BOX brand to the world of FAST TV

Does a FAST channel save that much money compared to a regularly broadcast one once you've already got all the infrastructure set up? It feels like the key costs of programming the playlists and loading the videos would stay roughly the same?