October 2009 was one of the most eventful months of the Freeview era for Babestation and its sister shows. The post opens with a compilation from one of the month’s events: Amanda Rendall’s “last ever night” on Babestation. The following night Amanda was making her debut on Bang Babes. In the fullness of time, she did return to Babestation, but the intentions here on 23rd October 2009 seemed pretty definite, with the onscreen ad box reading…
“Tonight is Amanda’s last ever night on Babestation. Call now for one last ****!”.
Here’s the full rundown of October 2009’s most notable trivia…
- Amanda Rendall, Jemma Jey, Dionne Mendez, Rachel Cole, Flo and other staff members parted company with the Babestation-related channels. Other girls moved away from the Freeview shows. Charlie C moved to Daytime, for example, and the Sexstation Web girls who’d been making limited appearances on Babestation or Partyland generally moved out of the picture.
- Geri concluded her role as a performer on the babe channels, before commencing a new backstage role which incorporated voice over presenting and sales management.
- The sets for all of the Cellcast night shows were completely rebuilt, with three of the four shows also being relocated. Sets which had previously been in different rooms, on different floors (and one of which until the previous month had been in a different building), were cramped together onto one floor – destroying the spacious aura of the previous sets and changing the feel of the shows. The scale and urgency of the redevelopment made the work almost impossible to hide from viewers, and resulted in several night show sequences being shot in front of half painted or unpainted walls. Lori Buckby said she’d helped with the painting, and didn’t appear to be joking.
- The Channel 96 show Party Girls was scrapped.
- Babestation Xtra was born, taking up residence on Channel 96.
- Babestation and its companion night shows dropped a long, previous allegiance to bed-orientated sets, and refocused on themed sets such as ‘bathroom’, ‘mechanic’s office’, and (unsurprisingly, given the redecorating and rebuilding), ‘construction site’.
- Babestation and its sister shows gained their first direct Freeview rival as Bang Media shows Bang Babes and Early Bird went live on Channel 98.
- Partyland lost its text chat facilities as all text chat was passed over to the new BS Xtra. This left Partyland’s onscreen graphics, without the text display, running with one of the smallest main blocks on a terrestrial babeshow screen.
The first of the pic roundups (above) shows some scenes from the final days of the old Babestation setup. Clockwise from top left there’s:
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1) Amanda Rendall on Babestation.
2) Nurse Tinkerbell (Jemma Jey) on Babestation 2. By this time BS2 had taken up temp residence in what used to be the Babestation 3G lounge.
3) Nurse Jada on Babestation.
4) Charlie C in 2 for 1 session with Dani O’Neal on BS2. Charlie switched from night shows to days at the end of the month. She’d been a high impact, boundary pushing night girl throughout the Freeview explosion, so her move to days was another big change for the terrestrial audience.
5) Stevie Ritchie on Babestation. Like Jada, Stevie was a relative newcomer to Babestation’s Freeview night shows. Both girls were very important additions.
6) Rachel Cole on Partyland.
The second roundup shows the transition – some of the redecorating scenes from 25th October 2009. This was just a couple of days before the big night on which the new compact Babestation, centred around the sales hub of BS Xtra, was inaugurated.
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Top left, Reede Fox is on the old main BS1 set, which is temporarily housing lockers from the dismantled rest room. The sequence is, however, transmitting on Babestation 2 – very unusual indeed for the old BS1 set.
Top right, Yvette Merriman is where the rest room used to be. At this point it’s just a bare, plaster-filled wall, but a couple of days later this would be the new location for Partyland.
Bottom left, Rachel Cole’s legendary rear is the main focus of attention, but Rachel’s student dorm, as it’s being billed, is what used to be the Babestation 3G lounge. On the wall to the left of Rachel, a rough line has been painted to mark the division in the new sets. Left of the line will be Babestation 2, and right of the line will be Partyland.
Bottom right, the lack of space is apparent as the camera shooting Yvette’s pole section on BS1 is unable to cut out Jemma Jey’s arm, as she performs on Babestation 2, to the left.
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In the final roundup, some scenes from the ‘after’ phase.
Top left is Paige Tyler on the construction set. This set appeared to be a creation of circumstance, built around the decorating paraphernalia used in the studio makeover. The sight of Paige Tyler topless was still a double take novelty at this time, less than a week after the ‘big reveal’.
Top right, Daryl Morgan obviously having fun in the Partyland mechanic’s office. Note the very small main graphics block remaining after the text box has been eliminated.
Bottom left, More Daryl, this time with Reede Fox (left) on the brand new Babestation Xtra, which, as a specifically text-driven show, has a truly massive text block.
Bottom right, Cellcast’s first direct Freeview rival – Bang Babes. Jemma Jey left Babestation straight after Amanda in late October ’09, also heading for Bang Babes, and she’s seen here flirting with another babe of the moment – Jet Black.
The final picture recalls the finale of Jemma Jey’s much celebrated time on Babestation. Her last night was 24th to 25th October 2009, and great as some of the additions have been since that day, no one’s ever replaced her.
