PG Tips stopped using Al in the adverts in early 2010s but monkey carried on until 2016 or so but they don't use monkey anymore, i think they changed advertising agencies. A monkey graphic sometimes appears in social media but sadly no more videos.
The reason Monkey wasn’t used after ITV Digital collapsed was because there was a legal battle between the ITV and the advertising agency over who had the rights to use him. This debate was settled when the rights were given to Comic Relief in 2005.
Itv digital was based in the same headquarters as Sky's previous rivals, British Satellite Broadcasting and sky used some of the same tactics against them a decade later and ITV digital didn't think to preempt that and offer the same deals before sky did. The deal with the football league was crazy, their bid was far too high for lower league games, Premiership highlights and league Cup games and when they backed out the deal years early it left a lot of clubs in financial hardship and some did go into administration in the years following the collapse of the service. I have it's successor free view and I needed a digital ariel for it and it still sometimes has a bad picture if the weather isn't great but it was a one off payment for the box.
PG Tips had a promotion a few years back and gave away stuffed Monkeys, I’m pretty sure I still have one knocking around somewhere! That was the second golden age of advertising, I miss it so much 😅
The problem with On/ITV Digital was that competing with Sky was a Herculean task, Sky, ostensibly had a better product with better advertising, and stable reception. If anything were to go wrong with your Sky box, you could call a technician to put it right and the problem would be remedied without it conking out. Whereas with the On/ITV Digital boxes, even if you called a repair technician out, the problem would constantly occur, with it locking up and freezing mid programme, equally bad if you were watching an intense part of a soap opera and it froze, you'd either have to fix it yourself or wait for a repair technician. This was back in the time where DVR and recording programmes from your TV didn't exist or existed in a primitive form, so you might as well had missed the show that you might've been watching. What they should've done was just not go ahead with the terrestrial TV idea, and just made some channels to go on rival platforms. If they didn't fail at the DTT thing, we wouldn't have Freeview to come from it, so every loss breeds a victory sometimes. (Actually, I bungled the thing about DVR boxes like Sky+, turns out the platform and the boxes were launched in 2001. Seeing as Sky cost an arm and a leg to maintain due to paying for the packages you wanted, say if you wanted the sports and the entertainment channels, it's a dear do!)
you missed the 3rd reason for its failure. the encryption system they used was already cracked before they even started broadcasting so only around 1 in 5 viewers of ITV digital were paying them any money.
I had On Digital and was supposed to get a full service from the Sutton Coldfield (Birmingham) transmitter. Living so close to the Land Rover factory in Solihull, I saw more channels with a red dot not being able to receive anything - The only reason I had it was because of ITV 2 as ITV would not broadcast on Sky (Digital) back then.
Analogue Cable TV was better than ITV Digital because because they bundled Cable TV and phone service together and they used to throw in a 2nd phone line so you could use dial up internet and still use the phone. Every aspect of NTL and Telewest Cable TV now Virgin Media was good even if the customer service was poor.
What isn’t mentioned here was the fact that Sky were involved in a piracy group and actually assisted pirates in blowing open the ONdigital encryption. Following the collapse of ITV digital, the underlying technology later evolved into Freeview around 2002, which is the current terrestrial standard still in use today (albeit with some technical changes to allow for HD channels). The original set top boxes could be used for Freeview but eventually stopped working when some fundamental changes were made to the transmission standards.
i think that sky won because they made boxes longer then itv because itv is a brodcasting tv thing sky was allways knowing for makeing the tv boxes for satlight tv and componnys knowed what sky was so they stayed with them then itv they ar new to tv boxes and saw how bad it was so they did not risk it and decided to use sky
