I was on the cusp then, but still close enough to get misty eyed over TV Cream's new update which takes a long look at the early days of Satellite TV, filling in the blanks on what I missed. Looking through, a pioneering spirit was in evidence -- many of the channels listed still exist to some extent in some form, even Sky Soap, which was basically Granada Plus and UK Gold. But who would have thought the following would return:
"Before the advent of Sky Digital brought us an infinite number of television stations, all of them featuring Paul Lavers, back in the 1990s the restricted capacity of the first Astra satellite meant lots of networks had to squeeze onto the same transponder for a few hours each day. Perhaps the most extreme example was the magical Transponder 47, which depending on the time you tuned in, broadcast imported televangelism, rolling weather forecasts, reruns of Take The High Road, hours and hours of extended adverts for holidays, documentaries about Nazis, reruns of Land of the Giants and ancient football. Creamup also used to love Transponder 59, which showed a rolling promo about the Astra satellite itself, with loads of footage of rockets taking off and stuff. But that's just us.Freeview's new Top Up TV doesn't work for this very reason. Because of limited bandwidth, some quite good channels are only going to be broadcasting for part of the day. So tough if the show you wanted to watch is on after midnight. Some things really don't change.
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