Lifestyle (British TV channel)

Lifestyle was a British daytime television channel dedicated to women and family, and was broadcast on cable and on transponder 5 of the Astra satellite from February 1989.

Lifestyle
CountryUnited Kingdom
Broadcast areaEurope
Ownership
OwnerWHSTV (WHSmith)
Sister channelsLifestyle Satellite Jukebox
History
Launched30 October 1985
Closed24 January 1993[1]
Replaced byVOX
UK Living
Lifetime

The channel's logo originally consisted of three-dimensional graphics forming a face, but when the channel relaunched in 1987, it was changed to a colourful pastel butterfly graphic along with a signature flute tune, typifying the gentle pace and reflective style of the channel as a whole.

History

Lifestyle was launched on 30 October 1985 and was initially available on cable networks such as Rediffusion Cablevision in parts of the United Kingdom[2] and Cablelink in parts of Ireland.[3] Lifestyle's daytime lineup mainly consisted of magazines, novelas and movies. The programming was linked by an in-vision continuity announcer, David Hamilton. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, the channel was showing a range of classic American comedies, crime dramas (such as Divorce Court and Remington Steele) along with film noir classics from the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the daily Canadian exercise routine shows such as Charlene Prickett's It Figures and Cynthia Kereluk's Everyday Workout also included.

In 1990, the transponder was used to broadcast the Lifestyle Satellite Jukebox, a music video request channel from 10.00pm to 6.00am. The hours between the ending of Lifestyle's programmes and the start of Satellite Jukebox were filled by Sell-a-Vision home shopping programmes. For a time, The Children's Channel also transmitted on transponder 5, airing during the early morning before Lifestyle programming started.

In the early 1990s, Lifestyle's transmission time was extended and it aired 10.00am to 6.00pm. The channel became more associated with the Sky Television brand by becoming part of its advertising campaigns for the Astra satellite on which all Sky channels and Lifestyle could be seen. The channel was airing the successful chat show Sally Jessy Raphael along with several popular American gameshows including Classic Concentration, The Joker's Wild, Tic-Tac-Dough and Supermarket Sweep. More recent programming was also acquired, and Australian series including Rafferty's Rules, Cop Shop and Skyways aired along with American soap operas Search for Tomorrow and The Edge of Night.

Closure

The channel's fate was sealed because it never achieved huge ratings, and Lifestyle closed down on 24 January 1993, with its most popular shows moving to Sky One and a new channel for women launched a few months later called UK Living on the Sky Multichannels package. Astra transponder 5's programming was replaced the following day by a German language channel, VOX.[1]

See also

References
  1. "Remembering Lifestyle - including Final Closedown". thesearethedays on YouTube. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  2. "Unofficial Rediffusion Cablevision website (archived)". Archived from the original on 1 April 2004. Retrieved 14 July 2019.
  3. "ICDG". Retrieved 14 July 2019.
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