Smile TV2: Party Girls & Channel 46

Smile TV2 on Freeview Channel 46 was unusual in that it mixed babeshows with other types of interactive entertainment.  It’s live broadcasts potentially ran from ten in the morning right through until 05.30 the next day, although some daytime programmes would take impromptu breaks depending on how they were staffed. Smile TV2’s daily listings presentation, which would give a good idea of a typical schedule was presented by the one and only, Lori Buckby, back in the days when she was still a demure daytime host, in a dress.

Even though Smile TV2 wasn’t specifically a babe channel, it was Freeview’s most important babe channel to date. Smile TV2 on Freeview 46 was the channel that took the terrestrial live babeshows from the obscure, early morning bikini-land of Party People to the all night naked explosion of ‘A-Bomb’ Amanda Rendall and Co, tearing up the rulebook in a frenzy of virtual sex. This was the channel of many things, but first and foremost, it was the channel of Party Girls – the programme that rewrote the parameters for night time terrestrial television, and made the impossible, possible.

Amanda Rendall undoubtedly drove Party Girls’ sexual theming to within an inch of its life. She was probably a moderator’s ultimate nightmare, but she certainly got the channel noticed, and she remains one of the most daring crowd-pullers the babe shows have ever had.

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Starting up on 8th September 2008, Smile TV2 was a low-bandwidth, experimental, compilation of Babestation’s interactive products, with a schedule which varied and evolved over time. In the course of what was effectively a six month trial, the daytime and evening schedule was particularly prone to change, although the ‘psychic’ shows and interactive talk show The Chat featured throughout most of the channel’s tenure, and came to identify Smile TV2 in pre-watershed hours.

The Chat was really a daytime babe show, although it was presented very differently from a typical flirt-themed programme like Babestation Daytime, and was expressly non-sexual, with the girls fully clothed and sitting behind a desk. Suggested conversation would be everyday topics such as the news and media, and lifestyle. The dynamics still, nevertheless, appealed predominantly to the same male audience who’d be interested in more typical daytime babe shows. There were no male presenters, and almost all the females came from the same demographic as the flirt shows.

Some Chat presenters, indeed, were flirt show hosts. Paige Tyler, for example, worked on both The Chat and Party People. And some Chat presenters either were or had been part of the adult industry. Unlike the psychic or life-coaching shows, The Chat was inevitably going to attract that core of guys who were less interested in the actual topic of conversation, and more interested in the young woman they were talking to. That, for me, defined The Chat as a babe show.

The Chat and Psychic Interactive Channel 46

Whilst the ‘psychic’ shows were in no shape or form babe shows, Jemma would certainly have caught the attention of babe show fans, and in fact she also presented at least one of Smile’s early morning ‘dating’ ads (sandwiched between two babe shows), so it seems Cellcast also recognised her appeal to the ‘horny guy market’. Channel 46 focused heavily on ‘dating’ services (premium rate texting), running loops of ‘dating’ ads when live programmes were not on air, and levering a ‘dating’ service into the repertoire of The Chat.

After the 9pm watershed, Smile TV2 screened its own version of Party People. This really was a typical, flirt-themed daytime babe show, and it was followed, at 10pm, by the full-blown, night time, sexually-themed babe show – Party Girls. In fact, Channel 46’s version of Party People (not to be confused with the Channel 37 version) differed from Party Girls only in the graphics surrounding the screen and the type of adult phone chat allowed. Party People allowed flirt or ‘lifestyle’ chat only – no phone sex, but everything else was the same. Same girls, and same set, although Party People would use only the couch, whereas Party Girls would use both the couch and the ‘bed’.

After a number of attempts to make the 9pm Party People broadcast more viable (including cheap phone sex by slashing call charges from £1.50 per minute to 75p, reducing PP’s duration from an hour to half an hour, and even using the whole show for on-air chat), it was scrapped on 18th February 2009. For the channel’s final month on air, Party Girls started at 9pm.

And so we arrive at Party Girls – Smile TV2’s own claim to historical significance. Between late summer and Christmas 2008, Party Girls steadily but determinedly introduced the full Babestation night show to UK terrestrial TV. Babestation was never mentioned (except once or twice by accident), and Party Girls had its own rather spartan studio room, but by the end of 2008 it was Babestation in every other respect. Babestation girls, providing full Babestation adult content.

The quest to take Babestation from its home on Sky TV to the much more risky terrestrial platform could have gone seriously wrong. But it didn’t. When you switch on Freeview’s free-to-watch adult channels five years on in September 2013, remember that in August 2008 there was no such thing, and no one really knew if it could be done. Through its perfectly-paced and daring journey from euphemistic “cheeky chat” to obvious, all-out filth, Party Girls was the reason you now have those channels.

Party Girls Freeview Channel 46

One of Party Girl’s other points of interest was the communication. Party Girls differed markedly from more recent babe shows in that it had an event-driven, dynamic structure, and took viewer engagement seriously – often proving more entertaining than the mainstream channels, even for the passive viewer. Some of the babes involved in the show included: Yvette Merriman, Jemma Jey, Dani O’Neal with Tiffany Chambers, Dionne Mendez and Lynsey Atkinson. Lynsey was a Party People daytime girl who became a popular Party Girls guest in early 2009. All the other girls were regulars.

What happened to Smile TV2?

To briefly chart the continuation of the Smile TV2 brand, the original Smile TV2 closed down on the morning of 17th March 2009 (Party Girls being the final live broadcast). It was removed from the Freeview EPG on 31st March / 1st April ’09, after which it ceased to exist. It was called Smile TV2 (and not just Smile TV), as there was already a Smile TV on Channel 37, carrying Cellcast’s Party People shows.

However, SmileTV2 was subsequently used as the branding for Freeview Channel 33 from 12th May 2009. This was the channel set up to carry the first branded Babestation broadcasts on Freeview. Babestation 1 began transmitting on the channel just after midnight on 13th May 2009, and but for a brief switch-around in early 2010, SmileTV2 has remained Babestation 1’s Freeview home ever since. SmileTV2 moved from Channel 33 to Channel 94 at the end of September 2009, when the adult channels were first separated from the ‘family viewing’, and then from Channel 94 to Channel 172 in mid October 2012.

The only period during which the ‘new’ SmileTV2 didn’t carry Babestation 1 was between 11/12 Feb 2010 and 14/15 April 2010, when it instead carried Babestation 2. For that two-month spell, Babestation 1 switched over to Channel 96, which was simply named ‘Babestation’. Channel 96 became the encrypted channel (Babestation Xtreme) from the night of 14th to 15th April 2010, so the main portion of Babestation 1 – midnight to 5am – was moved back to SmileTV2 on Channel 94. However, the early portion of Babestation 1, from 11pm, did remain on Channel 96 and was used to promote and sell the encrypted service.

Here’s a quick summary, then, of SmileTV2’s Freeview night show history, as of 21st September 2013…

08/09/2008 to 17/03/2009 (Channel 46) – Party Girls
13/05/2009 to 30/09/2009 (Channel 33) – Babestation 1
01/10/2009 to 11/02/2010 (Channel 94) – Babestation 1
12/02/2010 to 14/04/2010 (Channel 94) – Babestation 2
15/04/2010 to 17/10/2012 (Channel 94) – Babestation 1
18/10/2012 to present (Channel 172) – Babestation 1