It’s often the stuff that gets taken for granted in the moment that acquires the most nostalgia in the future, and the earlier xxXpanded Freeview shows of 2013 have certainly started to register as a point of great interest. The show is now of course back on Freeview in its 2014 guise of Xpanded TV, transmitting from 3am each morning on Channel 182. But in this post I’m looking at some of the scenes from xxXpanded’s original run on terrestrial screens.
Channel 180 shows market-busting cheap rate calls. xxXpanded implemented a Happy Hour to coincide with their January 2013 launch on Freeview – initially running from the midnight kickoff until 1am, and offering a basic call rate of just 26p per minute. Whilst the midnight Happy Hour was quickly dropped after the Freeview launch, it was reallocated to the end portion of the show and retained though into the spring, as well as some selected dates in the summer.
The morning of 27th April 2013, recalls the lineup of Billie, Hazel Bond and Lizzy James. Basic call rate had worked its way up to 61p per minute by this time, although the rates seemed very fluid and could change within the course of a night. With a lineup like this, though, I doubt many callers would be moaning at 61p.
Another of xxXpanded’s delights in the early weeks of the Freeview show was Amber Lou
(now known as Chessie Kay). Initially the xxXpanded girls were using handsets on Channel 180. It appeared, however, that the handsets were primarily a prop (to shake as a visual indication of a free line), as the girls also wore headsets and therefore didn’t need their ‘phones’ for verbal communication. Through the course of April 2013, the handsets were increasingly left lying dormant on the bed, and then, happily, eliminated entirely.
Billie and her striking red hair. Tammy, Lizzy James. Contrary to the way it might look, I’m not trying to start a Lizzy James fan page with this post – it’s purely that Lizzy’s employment on the Freeview show in the first half of 2013 was very intensive, and she happened to be in all the group pics I thought were good enough to publish.
