@Babe_TV’s blog post about Freeview CH98 and the Early Bird Show featuring the likes of Fernanda and Evelyn. This post orignally came out on Tumblr in December 2013, enjoy!
Early Bird was Bang Media’s daytime babeshow for the Freeview audience. Going out on Channel 98 between 21st October 2009 and 19th November 2010 (when Bang Media’s Freeview broadcasts were zapped by Ofcom), Early Bird was essentially a breakfast time ‘terrestrialisation’ of Sky show The Pad. It was transmitted from the same studios as the night show Bang Babes, and ran from 05:30 until 9am daily. In the image above you can see one of Early Bird’s very most celebrated and most prominently featured babes – Brazilian pin-up Fernanda Ferrari.
Bang’s daytime shows were heavily implicated in Ofcom’s case against the interactive broadcaster, and looking back it’s not difficult to see why. Not only was the girls’ clothing often extremely revealing – see through tops, barely existent thongs, etc. – the poses and onscreen activities could be difficult to distinguish from those on a typical night show. Early Bird could, at times, be easy to mistake for Bang Babes, and the regulator found the highly suggestive visuals particularly unpalatable at breakfast time or during the day.
For babe channel fans, of course, it was a different story, and Early Bird was a firm favourite with early risers. Above, the image of Evelyn (another firm favourite with fans), shows the kind of vision viewers could expect to wake up to on Freeview 98. Definitely not what Ofcom would consider suitable for family viewing over breakfast, but pretty harmless in the grand scheme of TV entertainment, and I’m guessing the programme was quite a good remedy for single men with early morning lethargy. No alarm clock could swing the average guy’s brain into action like an episode of Early Bird. It’s commonly cited as Freeview’s best ever daytime live babeshow, and I’m certainly not going to argue with that.
When Bang Babes ended at 05:30 each morning, the initial plan had been to screen an Early Bird intro VT, but as time went on, use of the VT began to lapse, and it eventually became commonplace for the transition from Bang Babes to Early Bird to comprise nothing more than a camera pan from night girl to day girl, and a quick switch of the onscreen graphics. Generally, Early Bird would feature dedicated daytime models, but it was by no means rare to see a Bang Babe covering the show. For the final image, below, I’ve added a 2010 recollection of former Miss Great Britain and Early Bird supermodel Emma Spellar. Emma was another extremely popular choice for Early Bird, and thus remains one of the show’s most synonymous names.
Don’t forget, there’s now a much more detailed post on Early Bird, with lots more pics, in: Freeview’s Hottest Daytime Babeshow.
