Just seven minutes (give or take) of 4-Tel on View, the Channel Four equivalent of Pages from Ceefax. It's early in the morning of August the 9th, 1996 - very much post-ORACLE and into the reign of the soulless Teletext Ltd. Not that 4-Tel itself changed a whole lot in between, being an ancillary service-within-a-service that you actually had to seek out, because the front end was otherwise identical to the one on ITV. And if you did seek it out, there wasn't really that much there of interest, or that couldn't be found in the main ORACLE/Teletext body.
But it was Channel Four's and they were proud of it, or at least aware that it existed, so for an hour or so before startup they spooled out some images from it, accompanied by the occasional little custom promo animation in between about how you get MORE FROM 4 if you read it - scientifically proven!
Apologise to test tone fans, but I couldn't abide seven minutes of that shit, so I've replaced it with some classic Follows Shortly grooves from back in the day. First, the electric "groove" of Finding My Feet by Simon Gray, then the smooth jazz a la marshmallow of Derek Austin's "The Lady Loves to Travel", and finally the industrial funk of "Human Factor", some of David Reilly's Modern Music in the English Styles.
So what have we got? Apart from little men jumping out of television screens begging us to read the damn service, there's also a sort of Jobfinder segment where various production companies advertise vacancies on upcoming projects to - they hope - be broadcast on Four. Like a sports magazine for kids called Rookies, which needs pretty much everything from a presenter down to basic material for it to introduce. It did eventually go out, so it must have got some. Complete blank to me, but apparently produced by Lofty from Eastenders, so there you go.
Or, cookery programmes are pretty ubiquitous these days. So if you want to get on this bandwagon before it leaves town, well, so do the Ricochet Brothers, so call them if you can hold an egg-whisk. Also popular: docusoaps about proles who work with their hands. Or if you're getting divorced and are prepared to sob down the lens, or if anything interesting has ever happened to you involving money, or if you're trying to get rid of your old person, or if you're an old person whose children are trying to get rid of you. Or have a special talent, like tapdancing or racism or something. Or both. Or are you a sleepwalker? Yes? SLEEPWALKER? HELLO? ARE YOU SLEEPWALKING RIGHT NOW? Forget it.
"Wanted" I do remember. It was actually quite good, despite the presence of Richard Littlejohn, which is frankly a miracle in itself. It didn't quite get the ratings to justify the high expenses, though. Just a little ahead of its time, really.
There's also a competition for thick people, in which you could answer basic true or false questions on Channel Four programmes in order to win almost as much as you spent on the 0891 phone call in the first place.
Finally desperation sets in and they start advertising something called "LOOK AT ME I'M ON TV" where you apparently just dress up as a jester and run around for five pence, when the recording dies.
4-Tel on View finally became redundant when Channel Four rebranded and shortly afterwards went 24-hours in the new year. I hope they wrote in to DOSH for advice.
21 окт 2024
