The Television Affair: UK Satellite and Cable TV channels in the 80s

This whole video is narrated with the energy of someone whose producer has told him he's got to go to news and sport in five seconds.

This is probably one of my favourite random YouTube finds - thoroughly THOROUGHLY enjoyed this, especially as a massive TV geek myself! So much nostalgia and eye-opening moments, and really unlocking a chamber of time that feels very fever dreamy. Looking forward to bingeing the rest of your videos - the Channel 4 breakfast series is gold!

This is absolutely brilliant. I'm a huge nostalgia addict!! As well as old television stuff from the 1980's!!

You’re taking me back to my childhood. Bloody Telecat, what a blast from the past! The Children’s Channel was awesome!

Thanks for this! Fond memories of watching satellite TV at my grandparents house in the late 80s - they had a huge dish in their back garden that you had to move using a control box in the living room to line up with the different Astra satellites. Loved watching Doctor Who and Blake’s 7 on UK Gold, DJ Cat and Inspector Gadget on TCC and Unsolved Mysteries on Sky One. My brother and I also thought it was hilarious to watch German channels like Pro Sieben. I also remember when the Astra 1D satellite was launched in the 90s and watching the SES information video channel 😄

I am from the US and thanks for sharing with us all what UK tv was like back then

It's really great to read all the stories here and how similar they are: us as young kids dying for cable/satellite tv and more channels, more choice. And it's not just Britain or Ireland. My experience here in NL was very much the same. We got temporary cable in 1987, I remember it very vividly. My parents didn't want a subscription as our roof antenna had just been replaced just a few month earlier (the old one had been struck by lightning). Alas, they did want to have the free connection as it was said it would be very expensive to get a connection later on. With the connection also came a free test subscription for three months. Man, did I love that! Besides the two main Dutch public channels and the three German public channels we already had from the roof aerial, it also added a fourth German public (regional) channel, German commercial station RTL Plus, Sky Channel and Super Channel. I absolutely loved RTL and definitely the Saturday morning cartoons on SKY! Who doesn't remember that? who was a kid back then?! 4 hours of cartoons and kids programming, I couldn't believe it. In fact it was the reason the Dutch public broadcaster also started such morning kids program and it wasn't bad, but is was only two hours, on Sunday rather than Saturday and of course it had to be culturally acceptable. Besides the cool stuff like GI Joe and Inspector Gadget there were many shows back then that were on the one hand quite ingenious and creative, but also often very moralistic. I liked the first, but very much disliked the latter. Even at 10-12 years old I recognized that apparent 'need' to educate us by some programming and I didn't like it. A few years later when our cable connection was sadly long gone, my older brother got a satellite receiver for Astra and could watch it in his room. The channels were back! Aah, the golden days of analog Astra in the early nineties, such great memories. Eventually we got our cable back again, now with much more channels including Dutch commercial channels, which had been legalized in 1989. I bought a satellite system myself in 2000 and have been watching sat since. Sadly, the programming for most channels is very poor now. My kid version won't believe what I'm saying now, but there's simply too many channels. As a result, many of them are filled with garbage and endless commercials. Where are the times of two main public channels, two main commercial channels, a couple of specialized channels like MTV for music, SKY for general entertainment for a younger audience and perhaps something cultural/educational but no more than ten and no more than 6-7 minutes of commercials per hour? Programming would become a lot better I think.

Love this, feels like Applemask/Bob the Fish's ITV in the Face but Satellite related!

This is a pretty good video you made here. Can't wait for future videos like this one.

I have just finished binge watching Jupiter Moon that was on Galaxy. Only ever saw clips before. Glad I found it, it was very enjoyable!

Very enjoyable watch this. Well done. Love all this old footage

Man that phone with a face in it is some freaky trip stuff

Good work and thanks for the name check!

In the 80s and 90s I lived on the east coast (Clacton on sea) and has a large mast in the back garden with Aerials pointing towards The Netherlands, Belgium and France which gave me an extra 9 unique channels. I can add some supplemental info. Telechat was actually a French tv show. It seems like it had an English dub done. Pin up club was a Dutch soft porn show from the Netherlands with a very catchy tune. The Dutch tv channels were great. They re-run a huge amount of old British shows. The Goodies, Some Mothers do ave em and Are you being served to name a few. I also remember Super channel when it launched. I had a 1.2M dish at the time and used to watch their reruns of Game for a laugh amongst other things. I still have some of the satellite TV guides and video recordings of the time. Great memories.

I remember my parents bought a cabletron device. All I did was watch The Box and play the multiple games 😬😌

Excellent stuff mate. Love it.

So much genius editing in this -- a puppet Emu doing a Black Eyed Peas bit 👍🤣. My sort of humour😁

Love these videos mate I'm a complete nerd for this shit too I remember stuff that most don't but have no desire to make videos so people like you and Kim justice are doing amazing work. That children's channel took me back think they rebranded it to TCC I remember something on there called Sophie socket & the ratkan rocket. We got Sky TV in 1990 so I Remember DJ Kat as well

Growing up in Swindon, I had Swindon Cable. Loved it. Seeing the "Cable Television guide" I'd love to get some hard copies of that! I also recall late night HVC broadcasting :-)

This exhausted me. Well done on putting this together, especially the history of local cable in the UK, not to mention the good old days of pan-European TV.