This blog was inspired by @babe_TV Tumbler blog, first posted November 10th 2013. Shows like Red Light Central, a.k.a Playboy TV Chat had a phenomenal visual impact and babe channel babes like Lucy Zara, (above) looked so radiant but was it really a good move to only have one girl per night?
During the 2000s, live babeshows across the EPG, organised their nights into, blocks of time called ‘sections’. With each ‘section’ being the amount of time a babe, (or sometimes numerous babes) would stay on screen before going off for a break. Most sections would only last 30mins, so you might get Ella Jolie on screen from 10pm – 10.30pm, then Dani O’Neal from 10.30pm-11pm then Charlie C from 11pm-11.30pm. (As of the time of this blog’s original writing) however, the concept of brief, pre-planned sections no longer exists. With many girls occupying a channels for almost an entire night. This would happen most regularly on Red Light Central TV and Xpanded while Studio 66 would be a bit more like Babestation and rotate more regularly. So what caused this change and does having a longer section time make more sense?
Bang Babes arrived on Freview around October 2009. Their concept of ‘section’s involved mixing up the time with some girls staying on longer than the base time of 30mins. Some other Freeview shows around 2008/2009, like Elite TV, (a.k.a S66) would run sections longer from around 45mins to 60mins. And there were also instances in the later days of Party People where presenter shortages meant that Camilla had to work the whole night show portion of the show on her own from 3am until 5.30am. While this was a straight forward, 2hour 30mins section with just one girl. They still managed to convey the feel of sections by bringing Camilla off periodically to change outfits. Giving the producers chance to sell pictures during the breaks and keep the show as fresh as possible.
Soon after this night on Party People, other Babestation Babe channels started to lengthen their sections each night. This increase in section times coincided with other changes and developments too. Including going from 1 to 4 babe channels broadcasting each night. This meant more variety for the ever growing audience that was tuning in each night. With more people came bigger queues to talk to each girl and for the girl an increased focus on eavesdroppers as well as thinking about the person they were speaking too. With more guys waiting on the phone, the girls had to stay on a section longer just to give the callers a better chance at get through them.
By September 2009 Babestation went from a more relaxed, mostly interactive show with lots of on-air chats and downtime to a more streamlined, efficient and less interactive version with heavier focus on call minutes. Sections were still important however though they were longer and more flexible some of them reaching up to 1 hour 30mins or even 2 hours+ if necessary.
In April 2010 on Babestation Xtra the concept of long sections was epitomised by Tiffany Chambers, with Geri’s help when she pulled a all-nighter, remaining live for hours on end with her naked special. Between the two of them they kept the whole thing fun and fresh with plenty of naked teasing throughout. The event proved that putting the most lucrative babeshow models out at the most viable times for as long as the stats hold can in the immediate term prove successful and has now become common place.
Making overly predictable shows can lose viewer’s attention which could have been one of the things that negatively impacted S66-chat and RLC when it went to Freeview in late 2011. From the beginning RLC would often schedule one model per babeshow but the difference was that they had multiple freeview babe channels, there was still a choice for the viewer so the predictability wasn’t as damaging as it was for Playboy with it’s single freeview option.
Lori Buckby fit into the mold of longer sections, as her energy, enthusiasm and nakedness lent itself well to longer section on screen and she became a huge name because of it. Babestation’s propensity for predictable use of lucrative models at specific times divided opinion with some viewers thinking that there performances justified the regularly allotted times and other thinking that lack of variety was a problem.
In the end the need to turn a profit will always influence how much airtime a models gets on each babe channel at each particular time. Yes this can become predictable but there is no way to calculate how detrimental this predictability has when there are also a lot of other quantifiable factors in play at the same time. In the end babeshows are advertising not editorial material. Advertising is repetitive that’s how it has always worked.
Babeshows don’t have the luxury of appearing before highly engaged audiences who are by default listening and paying attention. They have to create their own engagement, and that’s where over-predictability suddenly jumps out as a big problem. Audiences who aren’t paying attention are really not worth having, so the babeshows have to be incredibly careful with repetition, eventlessness, and anything else likely to disengage viewers. Balancing immediate-term need with long-term viability is probably the hardest battle the babe channels face.
