Today we continue our story about the history of TVX and look in detail at their live babeshows. Starting with Callgirls Live, the TVX live babe channels were created to go into direct competition with Babestation, which had launched the year before, in 2002. Because the TVX Bouquet of channels were encrypted and pay per view, or viewed by paying a monthly subscription, their new babechannel also offered an opportunity for TVX to promote their encrypted channels. The idea was also to be able to undercut Babestation on the prices of calling the babes on Callgirls Live and possibly, to push Babestation out of the marketplace altogether. But things didn’t quite work out as planned…
The format of TVX’s brand new babeshow was Callgirls Live. It had two main babe presenters who read out texts and introduced the other babes that were on (usually two other babes). The screen would stay on the main presenters with the two babes taking calls situated in two separate inset Picture screens. The main screen was divided up to show everybody available. The girls on the channel would often rotate round from presenter to phone girl and vice versa.
Ric Porter, TVX producer who was hands on at this time and working with his then girlfriend Vicki tells us, “We tried to maintain a high degree of professionalism, running the 7 day-a-week live channel as if it was a mainstream one. We had technical rehearsals an hour before we went live, and regular ‘themed nights,’ when Vicki would get in early to deck the studio out with haystacks (for a ‘cowgirl’ theme) or light it moodily with candelabras and get all the girls to wear ball gowns. Invariably, despite all this effort, the callers would then just phone in asking to see the girls’ feet or something!”
“In those days, even on free to watch channels, we were allowed to have dildos and sex toys on set and played with by the girls, and we would also do an occasional ‘Peak of Pussy,’ if we got enough texts saying ‘P.O.P’ in. A rival channel at the time was doing a similar ‘Flash the Gash’ if they got enough texts in.”
The original live babeshow of Callgirls Live, was originally aired between 10pm and midnight. Ric describes his many adventures in his entertaining book “Welcome to Pornoland.” This is a great book describing Ric’s experiences and can be purchased on Amazon or on Kindle. Television X Callgirls Live was a real coup for the Television X set of channels and encouraged users to subscribe. to the whole bouquet of TVX offerings. When TVX Callgirls Live began, it featured two “callgirls,” Avalon and Starr, but this soon expanded to feature a whole host of different presenters.
The Show times of TVX Callgirls Live were soon extended to run between 10.00pm and 2.00am. In August 2008, the show began broadcasting from 8.00pm, showing soft clips until 10.00pm. The show also ran on Television X 2 and Television X 4 from 9.00pm until 11.00pm (11.15pm on Friday and Saturday) and then continued on TVX4 for 15 minutes. This section was used as a means of encouraging viewers to subscribe to the Television X package. The channel was also available online.
Due to the money coming in from the subscriptions of users to the TVX encrypted channels, TVX offered their premium rate calls to their babes at lower tariffs. TVX were no doubt hoping to pressure the established babe channels by running the phone lines at prices as low as 10 pence a minute. However, unlike their babeshow competitors, TVX call girls took a more conservative approach to the production making them less popular with the babeshow fans. This didn’t mean however, that they had inexperienced babes, in fact, quite the opposite. Ric Porter tells us “Our main staple of girls involved in CallGirls Live were Karen Wood, Heavenly, and many more who Vicki and I sourced from first filming them for various TVX pre-recorded programmes.”
Here are the names of some of the TVX girls you may remember, many of which also appeared on Red Light Central, Sexstation and Xpanded: Cali Garcia, Linsey Dawn McKenzie, Morgan James, Siobhan, Tilly Hardy, Leigh Smith, Lisa O’Connor, Sammie Dee, Honey Scott, Jasmine Jones, Rebecca "Bex" Shiner, Sarah-Louise, Bonnie Lee, Jade-Victoria, Charmaine Sinclair, Hannah Shaw, Sammie Pennington, Cathy Barry, Amber Leigh, Emily Dean, Tia Jones, Levi, Anni James, Daisy Dash.
You may recall that entrepreneur Richard Desmond was the leading man behind TVX, as well as being the owner of several major newspapers. One thing that was jolly well done for TVX was to also be able to use the media that Mr Desmond owned, to promote the TVX channels, but also to look at who was featuring on their live babe channels. Thus, mentions could be made in the adult mags his companies produced, but also directly and indirectly in the press, such as the Daily Star. Take a look at this web page from the Inside mole from TVX, which offers us hot news about TVX and particularly about their channel Red Hot. Heading the page is front page news from the Daily Star, which is then transformed into a story about TVX! Beneath that you can see Charmaine Sinclair in her younger days, again, a promo for TVX. And below that is a Gang Bang promo for, Ruby Reds and story about how she fucked over 100 men in a night. Who? You may ask. But Ruby Reds is actually none other than great British porn star and babe channel star, Michelle Moist! Problems for Television X
Initially, when the babe channels as we know them today launched, they were in the general entertainment section of the sky EPG, with Babestation being broadcast on Game Network. Sport TV did start a babe show in the adult section, but this was only free to air before the channel went encrypted. On February 28th, 2005, the babe channels had a big change around. Sky conducted a re-organization of the EPG and the babe channels, Babestation, Babeworld and Bang Babes were moved to the revamped adult section. While the TVX channels still had prime EPG positions, the introduction of the babe channels overall had a negative effect on the subscription-based channels. They did however manage to continue. In 2008 Ofcom fined TVX £25,000 for breaches of the Ofcom code for promoting a hardcore URL on one of their Red Hot channels. This was widely publicised, with Richard Desmond getting several mentions in the mainstream press.
Later, two TVX channels went onto the terrestrial EPG, starting with Cream Live on Channel 191 (Red Hot), from 2nd to 3rd November 2010. The basic rate per minute was 45p, with an extra featured a queue jump option at £1.50 per minute. Honey Nights began on Channel 192 (Filth) two nights later, with a basic rate of 75p, and again, had the £1.50 queue jump option.
In December 2010, both Cream Live and Honey Nights decided to raise their basic call rates to £1.50 per minute. They were now charging exactly the same basic rate per minute as Babestation. But on 23rd February 2011 – less than four months after going to air, Cream Live was dropped from Freeview Channel 191. It was replaced with an encrypted Television X porn transmission. Honey Nights continued for almost two more months, but was eventually wrapped up on evening, by Bex Shiner and Jade Victoria. This happened in the early hours of 18th April 2011. Thus Channel 192 became available, and was quickly taken up just a couple of nights later, by Elite TV, (now called Studio 66).
TVX Callgirls Live continued broadcasting until April 2011, when TVX decided to concentrate on the encrypted channels. A few years after Callgirls Live also folded, TVX tried again with two new channels based on different particular TVX stars, and then, after a brief hiatus, once again, this time with an offering more familiar to the classic Babestation model. The encrypted channels ran up until autumn 2020 when they were finally sold off and the TVX and Television x channels were removed from the EPGs. Most of the babes then went off to Red Light Central over in Bristol, but that’s another story….
We asked Ric Porter if he enjoyed his time at TVX and Callgirls Live. He said, “My time there as in house producer, cameraman and editor was a very happy one, where I learned a lot and made lots of friends. Originally it gave me the unique opportunity to play at making TV programmes with someone else’s money. At one point I was even an onscreen presenter myself when Portland Television, who ran TVX, also launched a short - lived public access style channel, showcasing viewer’s talents, The Talent Channel. The success of Television X helped fund the launch of the celebrity magazine OK!”
“I was involved with Television X from its original inception in 1995 to around 2007, after which I still shot an occasional series for them, most notably, “Jess West Ate My Homework”, and two series starring Busty Cookie.”
TVX takes its place in babe channel history for having been alternative and really very entrepreneurial in the early days of the babeshows. Thanks to Ric Porter for his input and for sharing his experiences. Now go BUY HIS BOOK!
