[Neil Jones]

I believe the LIVE on screen is down to allegations some years ago that certain programmes on ITV and other channels which claimed were live, were in fact not all live at all, and the public was lied to.

This happened way back in December 2003, during the then Living TV channel's paranormal show Most Haunted Live at New Year, when a large chunk of one of their night's show was actually not live but pre-recorded earlier in the evening and played into the programme, with a LIVE DOG on screen during it.

So now, to cover themselves, channels have LIVE on screen when it is live

I think Most Haunted had other issues besides not actually airing certain content live, which led to Derek Acorah being kicked off the programme,.

But of course we can go back to 1992 and Ghostwatch, which was fully scripted, fully recorded and was presented as being a live broadcast (and attracted a load of flak in the process when it turned out it wasn't actually live). So by 2003 it wasn't exactly a "new" thing that stuff claiming to be live wasn't actually live, but I think if the bulk of the output was live they could get away with saying it was live.

But yes its relatively recent for Live bugs to appear all over the place, but I don't think it was as early as 2003. Quiz TV might have had a hand in it and the whole "fictional winners" thing when all that came crashing down round broadcaster's ears, but I'm sure it was closer to the 2010s when Live bugs on stuff that is live was a thing.