During my last remaining years in the Army, I had a rough idea that I was going to be medically retired as a direct result from my spinal injury. Until this point in my life, I had no interest in technology what so ever, other than perhaps the odd arcade game and I did love my ZX Spectrum 48K when I was a young kid; however, again only for gaming.
I was mulling over what was going to happen to me when I left the Army under such circumstances and it was my Father in Law who pointed me in the direction of technology. I slowly eased myself into the world of tech purchasing my first computer, which back then was a Hewlett Packard desktop PC running Windows 95. I hadn’t got a clue what to do and spent the majority of my time playing Solitaire. This was when I discovered Dot TV or as it was displayed (.TV).
It was an entire channel on Sky dedicated to all things tech, starting at 6pm and finishing at 10pm. The channel started in 1996 and was closed down in 2000. Programs such as, “The Buyers Guide” hosted by Will Hanrahan and Chris e-bag Long, “Chips With Everything” hosted buy the beautiful Kate Russell, “Masterclass” hosted by Richard Topping otherwise known as Toppers and a few others. I loved the channel and watched it religiously.
The Buyers Guide was basically a product review program and on many occasions the products did not preform as they where supposed to. Chips With Everything was a phone in show where viewers would put questions to the host Kate Russell and one or two guests that changed every week. Masterclass was my saviour, hosted by the very funny Toppers, every episode was a tutorial on how to run a Microsoft Office application or another bit of software i.e Lotus Notes.
Now here in the UK, we have the amazing Gadget Show run by Channel 5 and as with Dot TV’s Kate Russell, the pretty lady for all the geeky men on the Gadget Show is Suzi Perry. However I do miss Dot TV and would love to see the return of the channel to our Sky service. Rightly or wrongly there was something about the unpolished performance of the show, probably a very low budget production, certainly in comparison to the Gadget Show, but the fact that mistakes where made with product reviews made the show’s all the more endearing.
So for those of you who remember .TV, what are your memories of the programs? Where you glad to see the channel close? Or sad, such as a geek like me? Do you think such a channel would work in today’s society what with the internet and all the content we have available to us via that platform? I’d love to hear from you all.
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