"Ten" 4

Today's notable for two anniversaries of revolutions in broadcasting.
Well almost. The first of which being 20 years since BBC GLR was launched to redefine local radio from the BBC in the London area. With Matthew Bannister in charge they launched the radio careers of many new faces including Chris Evans, Emma Freud, Chris Morris and Danny Baker who I never realised hadn't done radio before starting at GLR despite being a familiar face to viewers of LWT's "6 O'Clock Show" which by then had come to an end.

There were also a few old pros such as Johnny Walker and Tommy Vance presenting but even them could show how rather dated and out of touch Radio 1 appeared to be with the likes of Gary Davies and DLT still broadcasting to the masses.
Unsurprisingly Matthew Bannister became the controller of Radio 1 five years later with mixed results although that strays away from the main issue of Greater London Radio.

Another of their presenters happened to be Matthew Linfoot who presented "The Lavender Lounge" a weekly gay and lesbian magazine programme that ran for around 7 years and Charlie Gillet was also brought back to radio in 1995 via GLR after leaving Capital FM five years earlier.

Although it wasn't too succesfull as far as ratings went, it had it's fans and is still regarded more fondly than BBC London 94.9 today.
There's an interesting article about the station with containing more background information at Media Guardian.

The other anniversary is that of T4 the brainchild of Andi Peters which launched today in 1998 and it really doesn't feel that long at all. Back then it was hosted by Ben Shepard and the rather attractive Fran Lee who had previously appeared on "Wise Up", Channel 4's magazine programme presented by children and teenagers covering important issues and putting them face to face with celebrities they disliked.

Back then the programmes shown included Johnny Bravo, Sister Sister, and rather oddly the Waltons a programme that had been on Channel 4's Sunday schedule for as long as I could remember. This didn't go down well with regular viewers due to T4's on screen logo in the top left hand corner of the screen and in the end it was removed from the T4 strand entirely.
There were also rather cool looking idents which featured a weird spaceman character and hi-energy stings that went into the ad breaks such as "NEXT! Hollyoaks!".

Later on saw the arrival of Dermot O'Leary and Margharita Taylor and T4 became more popular than ever with popular programmes such as Dawson's Creek which I became quite addicted to. Especially when they had a "Dawson's Creek Day" in early August 1999 with the final three episodes of series 2 shown back to back and a selection of over programmes taking over the Channel 4 schedule up to 9pm broadcast live from Windsor Castle.
I may still have the links from that day on VHS back in Canterbury.

One of my personal highlights was when the New Radicals were meant to be performing their ever superb tune "You Get What You Give" on the show but they were unable to do so due to work permits running out so instead they had members of the crew miming to the song as "The Newer Radicals" which made it into Heat magazine.

Nowadays with Steve Jones and Miquita Oliver hosting and the programme being produced by an independent production company, it doesn't really excite me as much especially with the Hollyoaks omnibus taking up half of the day.
I thought a one hour was long back in 1998, although I'll avoid commenting about the person doing the sign language at the bottom of the screen.

It still pulls in the viewers however and according to the T4 website they'll be celebrating on the 9th of November. Hopefully the likes of Ben and Dermot will make an appearance although it's doubtful they'll get June Sarpong to keep her gob closed.