L!VE TV was a
British television station that was operated by
Mirror Group Newspapers on
cable television
Cable television is a system of delivering television programming to consumers via radio frequency (RF) signals transmitted through coaxial cables, or in more recent systems, light pulses through fibre-optic cables. This contrasts with bro ...
from 12 June 1995 until 5 November 1999. It was later revived for
Sky
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...
from 2003. In 2006, L!VE TV's name was changed to
Babeworld to reflect the channel's gradual change of focus towards
"adult material".
Background
L!VE TV was proposed by
David Montgomery as part of MGN's move into pay television and due to the dominance on satellite of
Sky Television, the decision was made to launch channels exclusively on cable.
In February 1995, Mirror Television, a
Mirror Group plc subsidiary, bought flagship cable channel
Wire TV which included sports content shown at certain times during Wire's output. Sports programming on Wire had recently been expanded when several sporting rights were acquired, such as
Vauxhall Conference football, the live broadcast rights to
Lennox Lewis
Lennox Claudius Lewis (born 2 September 1965) is a British-Canadian boxing commentator and former professional boxer who competed in the heavyweight division from 1989 to 2003. He was a three-time world champion, a two-time lineal champion, ...
's
WBC title fights and the 1996
Cricket World Cup, plus other sporting coverage following a deal with
Chrysalis Sport. Mirror Group planned to turn Sportswire into a separate channel to operate alongside L!VE TV, both of which would replace Wire. Wire was closed on 31 May of that year after
TCI (owners of
Telewest) and
NYNEX made a deal with
British Sky Broadcasting which included a clause that the cable operators would not launch any rival channels to those already operated by Sky. Consequently, Sportswire collapsed just days before it was due to launch, leaving Mirror Television with just L!ve TV.
First incarnation (1995–1999)
At its launch in 1995, the station was headed by
Kelvin MacKenzie with
Janet Street-Porter as managing director. Presented by an on-air team of young presenters who were mostly new to TV, Street-Porter created a channel based around presenter-led blocks of live broadcasting from its base on the 24th floor of London's
Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf is a financial area of London, England, located in the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Greater London Authority defines it as part of London's central business district, alongside Central London. Alongside ...
building. The output was orientated towards a rolling mix of celebrities, interviews, reviews, lifestyle features and reports from events and happenings across the UK.
Three months after going on air, Street-Porter left due to clashes with MacKenzie over content. MacKenzie axed the rolling content and replaced it with programmes that received much media coverage but low viewer figures. These included ''Topless Darts'', produced by future ''
Times'' journalist
Sathnam Sanghera with commentary by comedian Jimmy Frinton, the surreal
talent show ''
Spanish Archer'', ''Talgarth Trousers'' (a comedy sketch show) and ''
Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf is a financial area of London, England, located in the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Greater London Authority defines it as part of London's central business district, alongside Central London. Alongside ...
'', a soap opera which used the station's offices in
London Docklands
London Docklands is an area of London encompassing the city’s former docks. It is located in inner east and southeast London, in the boroughs of London Borough of Southwark, Southwark, London Borough of Tower Hamlets, Tower Hamlets, London ...
as a set. Other features included the weather read in
Norwegian by a blonde model (Eva Bjertnes or Anne-Marie Foss) wearing a bikini, ''Britain's Bounciest Weather'' with
Rusty Goffe (known, although uncredited, for his appearance as an
Oompa Loompa in the 1971 film ''
Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
''Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory'' is a 1971 American musical film, musical fantasy film directed by Mel Stuart from a screenplay by Roald Dahl, based on his 1964 novel ''Charlie and the Chocolate Factory''. It stars Gene Wilder as chocol ...
'') who due to his small stature bounced on a trampoline while doing the forecast (bouncing higher the further north he was talking about), ''Tiffany's Big City Tips'', in which model Tiffany Banister gave the financial news while stripping to her underwear,
[ ''Painted Ladies'', which involved topless girls "painting" on large sheets of paper with various body parts and the News Bunny, a person in a ]rabbit
Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae (which also includes the hares), which is in the order Lagomorpha (which also includes pikas). They are familiar throughout the world as a small herbivore, a prey animal, a domesticated ...
suit who stood behind a newsreader making gestures and expressions for each item.[Ashley Hames, "Sin Cities", Tonto Books, 2008, , p.33]
Considered cheap and always accused of poor taste, the channel never captured more than 1% of the British
British may refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* British people, nationals or natives of the United Kingdom, British Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies.
* British national identity, the characteristics of British people and culture ...
television audience under MGN, and at its worst was losing around £7 million a year. It was often described as " tabloid television", in part due to its control by MGN and because MacKenzie had been editor of ''The Sun
The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot Plasma (physics), plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as ...
''.
L!VE TV had a teletext service, initially operated by Intelfax Ltd.
Sport
The first event shown by the channel was the 1995 Rugby League World Cup and due to the BBC deciding only to show the opening match, the semi-finals and the final live, the channel was the only place to see live coverage of the majority of the games. L!VE also aired the 1995 darts World Masters, greyhound racing and weekly highlights from the 1998–99 Football Conference.
In 1996, Mirror Television entered the bidding process with Carlton Television for rights to show FA Premier League
The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football ...
football but they were beaten by Sky Sports
Sky Sports is a group of British broadcasting of sports events, subscription sports channels operated by the satellite television, satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television ...
, and shortly before its demise in 1999, it was said that the channel would, once again, bid for rights to show the FA Premier League
The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football ...
, but given the size of the financial commitment required, it is likely that it was merely a publicity stunt.
Local L!VE TV channels
Part of the overall plan for L!ve TV was for a network of local L!ve TV channels and at the end of 1995 and during 1996 the first local channels launched in Liverpool and Edinburgh. These channels featured both local content and programming from London. A local version was also carried on BT-owned Westminster Cable, featuring local headlines but had fewer and shorter opt-outs than the Liverpool and Edinburgh channels. Around 20 stations had been planned to launch by the end of the 1990s but only a small number ever made it to air.
Closure
L!VE TV ceased broadcasting on 5 November 1999 at 6 pm with a pre-recorded farewell message from the station's production team.
Earlier in the day, L!VE TV's local channels had aired their final local programmes before handing over to the national channel ahead of the 6pm closedown.
Second incarnation (2003–2006)
In 2003, L!VE TV returned as a free channel on Sky
The sky is an unobstructed view upward from the planetary surface, surface of the Earth. It includes the atmosphere of Earth, atmosphere and outer space. It may also be considered a place between the ground and outer space, thus distinct from ...
, first on EPG 274, then on 214. Its content was almost entirely archive from L!VE TV. Then in 2004, following competitor channels, its risqué archive of late-night offerings was supplemented with banners advertising adult text messaging.
Towards the end of 2005, the evening and late night were turned over to promoting adult text and phone-in services, involving models stripping to entice viewers into phoning or texting the studio. This was under the pretence that the viewer would get to talk to a studio guest.
By February 2006, content had dwindled to little more than these shows and it was moved to the adult section of Sky's EPG on 28 February 2006. Two days later, the name changed to Babeworld, ending links to the MGN operation. Babeworld closed on 22 October 2011, two days prior to Ofcom
The Office of Communications, commonly known as Ofcom, is the government-approved regulatory and competition authority for the broadcasting, internet, telecommunications and mail, postal industries of the United Kingdom.
Ofcom has wide-rang ...
publishing a notice of revocation for its broadcast licence, ending eight years of the active Sky channel slot.
2007–present
A number of archive programmes from L!VE TV, including ''The Why Files'' and ''Lie Detector'' were shown on My Channel, formerly known as Eat Cinema, on Sky channel 199.
The entire L!VE TV archive and the rights to the channel's programming were sold on eBay
eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...
in May 2013 with the winner of the sale buying the entire programming archive for £14,100.
Personnel
Presenters
* Matt Arnold[Matt Arnold]
at tvnewsroom.co.uk, retrieved 28 March 2019
* Richard Bacon
* Donna Bernard
* Julia Bradbury
* Bettany Hughes
* Simon London
* Esther McVey
Esther Louise, Lady Davies (born 24 October 1967), styled as Esther McVey, is a British Conservative Party politician and television presenter who has been serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Tatton since 2017, and served as the M ...
* Charlie Stayt
* Rhodri Williams
* Claudia Winkleman
Management
* Nick Ferrari
Nicolo Ferrari (born 31 January 1959) is a British right-wing conservative radio host, television presenter and broadcast journalist. He lives in Lewisham in London. He is best known as the host of the weekday breakfast show on the London-based ...
* Kelvin McKenzie
* Tony Orsten
* Rachel Purnell
* Janet Street-Porter
* Ruth Wrigley
See also
* Canary Wharf
Canary Wharf is a financial area of London, England, located in the Isle of Dogs in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The Greater London Authority defines it as part of London's central business district, alongside Central London. Alongside ...
* News Bunny
References
Sources
* Chris Horrie, Adam Nathan, "L!ve TV: tellybrats and topless darts : the uncut story of tabloid television", Pocket Books, 1999,
External links
L!VE TV online
Babeworld.tv website
(contains adult material)
{{Authority control
Television channels in the United Kingdom
Cable-only UK television channels
Defunct television channels in the United Kingdom
Television channels and stations established in 1995
Television channels and stations disestablished in 1999
Television channels and stations established in 2003
Television channels and stations disestablished in 2006
British companies established in 1995
British companies disestablished in 1999
British companies established in 2003
British companies disestablished in 2006