[harshy]

It’s a well produced pilot compared to calendar countdown.

[Cappuccino]

The American Countdown pilot is already being discussed here - pres.cafe 

[lookoutwales]

One from the file marked 'unusual prod caps' - or in this case, trying to cram at least two prod caps into one.

   

And as a bonus, there's a tongue-in-cheek report from London Tonight about LWT recruiting Jonathan Dimbleby to replace Brian Walden (this was just after his biography on Prince Charles was published, following on from his Central documentary that summer)

www.youtube.com 

[Neil Jones]

One from the file marked 'unusual prod caps' - or in this case, trying to cram at least two prod caps into one.

Ooh that's interesting.

That company credit seems to be only for one programme, and that's the second part of a period documentary from 1997 as part of Network First, which ran 1994-1997 on ITV, it was a post News at Ten programme by the looks of it and replaced a previous similar YTV programme that Jonathan Dimbleby was host of.

There's a Scottish company with a similar company name that's been around since 1988 according to Companies House.

[lookoutwales]

That company credit seems to be only for one programme, and that's the second part of a period documentary from 1997 as part of Network First, which ran 1994-1997 on ITV, it was a post News at Ten programme by the looks of it and replaced a previous similar YTV programme that Jonathan Dimbleby was host of.

First Tuesday?

Think the main differences were there was no studio presentation and it was more of an open strand for one-off documentaries from the whole ITV network (even Channel got a commission in its first year)

[Tola]

youtu.be 

Note how the adverts on this piece of continuity is national as this was recorded off satellite in comparison to cable where ads were local:
youtu.be 

(I assume on a few cable services is where they would opt in, as shown on the other clip above)

[James2001]

I remember that Super Noodles advert well, didn't realise it was Jake Wood in it until now though.

[nwtv2003]

Yours truly uploaded the second Bravo (cable) clip there, and yes on cable there were opt out adverts but not necessarily at every junction or covering every break. Quite often promos were also opted out of also. This was a practice they did on a number of Flextech channels (not Challenge TV though) and some others. They never opted out on the Sky channels. The practice of opting out of adverts was largely abandoned by the end of 1998.

[Stooky Bill]

I think it relied on triggers being sent out from the broadcaster to start the ad breaks, so of course it was up to them which channels allowed it. Flextech being owned by a cable company obviously was keen on doing it.

In the early days of digital some channels had specific cable versions with different promos and adverts. At least one of the UKTV channel, almost certainly UK Gold did. So there were promos/ads for Front Row Movies rather than Sky Box Office for example. Back then I think the UKTV line was probably different on Sky and cable so possibly slightly different promos too

[Steve in Pudsey]

Cable and Wireless didn't bother to provide a data bridge, so when they inserted their ads, teletext disappeared. Bloody annoying when you were trying to read Mailbox onPText