[Rex]

FTN was a decent proposal that only worked on paper, in my opinion. The 2-hour Thomas Cook infomercials at startup 6pm alongside 3-hour live quiz shows at 10pm they added later on: it *screams* barker channel.

It was good that they added Challenge gameshows and made an effort towards the last year - but by that point Virgin Media was their next big thing for them, inevitably it was gonna die. And whilst yes some Challenge content was on Virgin 1, it certainly wasn't as often.

A bit like Granada Plus and ITV3 really. Abruptly cut off and then ITV3 practically being its replacement, whilst not even containing half of the stuff that was on Plus. At least NOW they got Classic Emmerdale and Corrie

Ftn was wasted in those first few years especially when the first 2 hrs were just filled with teleshopping. A waste of airtime though they really redeemed themselves showing shows like Takeshi's Castle and the Crystal Maze at 6pm when 2007 came along

It's a shame that didn't last long when VM wanted to fight off the loss of Sky's basics with their own channel. Which didn't really work out in the end, long term