Here we have another blog by babe channel superfan @Babe_TV from their Tumblr account which has unfortunately been deleted but we have been sharing some of their salvaged posts for anyone interested in the history of Babestation. Read on for their blog post, originally posted on 31st August 2013 about The Beginnings of BSXtra 2009.
Babestation Xtra (or BS Xtra) was inaugurated on the night of 27th to 28th October 2009, replacing the short-lived Party Girls ‘revival’ on Freeview Channel 96. The initial plan with BS Xtra was to run the channel purely as a sales hub, with the telephone number on screen accessing Babestation 1 (on Option 1), Babestation 2 (on Option 2), and Partyland (on Option 3) – but providing viewers with no access to the presenters on BS Xtra at all.
On BS Xtra, viewers would see each of the other three Babestation channels streamed to video insets, whilst the presenter(s) responded to viewer texts and subtly promoted the other shows. Through the night, all of the performing models from the other babe channels would pop onto the BS Xtra couch for an on-mic chat, allowing viewers to get to know them. Importantly, this would keep the bulk of the marketing off the call channels.
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BS Xtra’s original design, circa October 2009, is shown in the picture above, with Paige Tyler as presenter, and with the streamed channels featuring Dionne Mendez (Babestation 1 – top inset), Kelly Carter (Babestation 2 – middle inset), and Louise Porter (Partyland – bottom inset). Very early BS Xtra shows would open in this format, with no graphics except the video insets.
At the time, Babestation were heavily into themed sets and were not typically using standard babe channel ‘beds’. It’s pretty clear Dionne’s on a motorbike, and Louise is in a bath. It’s not so easy to tell that Kelly is sitting on a giant shoe. One interesting thing about the streaming feeds was that they were entirely immune to graphics intervention, so when set/scene changes were made, rather than seeing a slideshow, viewers would see a couple of blokes walk on and move the props and mats around.
But this original format lasted just a week, before the video insets were removed, BS Xtra got its own phone line, and Babestation introduced two dedicated voice-over presenters (Jodie and Geri) to ‘sell’ the other channels from behind the scenes.
Babestation did try re-dedicating BS Xtra as a text-only show in the second half of November ’09, putting Jodie and Geri back on screen to essentially front the channel. But through the next few months BS Xtra steadily detached itself from text chat and all-night mic communication, as it morphed into another typical Babestation phone sex channel. They began to experiment with removing the couch at the beginning of April 2010, and a week into the following month, the set was fully re-designed around a generic Babestation ‘bed’.
One great piece of trivia from this show was that Tiffany Chambers, who was working on Elite TV after leaving BS at the end of August, texted BS Xtra as a viewer to say she loved the show, and that it reminded her of the way Babestation was when she first started. There was indeed a striking similarity between the initial BS Xtra screen design with its three video insets, and the main Babestation screen design circa 2004.
BS Xtra was certainly a lot of fun in 2009. Probably the most interesting facet of terrestrial babe channel history after Party Girls (Channel 46) and ‘Old’ Partyland.
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There’s a lot more about the early history of BS Xtra (2009), with more pics, in Freeview Babeshows: Rare and Unusual.
