Masti Nights On Freeview 97

What follows is a blog about the Masti Night show, originally posted by @Babe_TV on their Tumblr account.  Their’s was an incredibly detailed account and charted many of the events of Babestation going back a long time.  Unfortunately, it can no longer be accessed as the account has been deleted.  Luckily we have a number of posts and we will be posting them here and on babestation.tv in tribute to the work that was done.

The night of 1st to 2nd November 2011 marked the beginning of a new phase in the life of Freeview Channel 97, which had, in the consecutive eras of Partyland, Glamourchase and Babestation Blue, often struggled to find an identity.

Masti Chat was launched as a Sky-only, daytime broadcast at the beginning of August 2011, and was initially billed as a service for British Asian [men]. Three months later, the concept was trialled as a night show, with a Freeview portion going to air on Channel 97 at 01:01, 2nd November, and replacing Babestation Blue. Whilst BS Blue was restored to Channel 97 as planned the following night, Masti continued to be allocated frequent, full nights on Freeview, and it soon became an established part of the weekly schedule. It was broadcast from Babestation’s Central London studios, and was accordingly simple to implement on what was basically a Babestation channel.

Above: The first Masti Nights show, from the morning of 2nd November 2011, featuring, from left to right, Kiran Khan, Ayesha, and Shanti. 

Subsequently, other trial phone sex babe show concepts such as Dirty Wives, Babestation Apprentice and Sexstation were introduced to Channel 97 on a night-to-night basis, to compete with BS Blue for airtime, along with Masti. Indeed, there were even some unofficial concept trials run under the brand of Babestation Blue – domination and balloon fetish being memorable examples. But Masti Nights as a concept, surely had the greatest potential.

The idea of Masti was different from simply putting, say, Priya and/or Preeti Young on Babestation 1. Priya and Preeti were of Indian descent, and they looked Indian – but their chat was very British. With Masti, the idea was for the actual chat to have an Asian flavour, and for me, no one encapsulated this better than the Queen of Masti Nights – Shanti. Shanti was really a TV character but the feel was very authentic, and the harder, urban edge Shanti brought to Masti Nights did work extremely well. Straight away, you thought: “This is not Babestation with a new set of graphics”. It had a new identity, and that’s exactly what Channel 97 needed.

Above: Masti Chat subsequently had an early morning show on Freeview, but the Asian link became so tenuous that it was eventually absorbed into the Bikini Babes brand. 

One of the difficulties for Masti Nights, however, was sourcing that kind of talent in great enough supply to staff the number of broadcasts viewers would ideally have liked. Finding the right girls for Masti was, I’m sure, difficult enough for the daytime shows. But for the night shows, where the audience expected nudity, it must have been an exceptionally difficult task. Almost inevitably, then, the Masti identity was eroded as various Babestation regulars were drafted in to make up the numbers and/or shore up the revenue. The Babestation night shows did have a number of girls who didn’t seem out of place on Masti, but once Geri and the gang started appearing, it was silly to be transmitting the show as an Asian chat product.

The demise of Masti Nights, and even the subsequent early morning Masti Chat daytime Freeview show (which was eventually absorbed into the Bikini Babes brand in spring 2013), was almost certainly much more down to a shortage of authentic models than a lack of interest. I still think the actual idea of Masti Nights was easily the best among Cellcast’s Freeview 97 trial projects. It’s just a shame it couldn’t maintain its cultural identity.

Keep an eye for more weekly posts from the old @Babe_TV Tumblr account and if you want to find out more about the History of Babestation, check out this Timeline.