On 16th March 2009, a grim inevitability struck the Freeview EPG, as the bizarre babeshow experiment of SmileTV2 on Channel 46 reached its final day. In the course of the previous six months the babe channel had brought a new kind of chaos to terrestrial screens, but the night show, Party Girls, had proved the greatest success. Party Girls – a parallel version of Babestation – was not only the first full-strength interactive babe channel night show on Freeview, but also, due to its novelty factor, its personalities, and the lengths to which it went to engage viewers, the most exciting.
NEVER TO RETURN
Over the course of the final week, fans were advised that Party Girls would, in due course, be returning to Freeview with all the premium trappings (i.e. Babestation 1). But actually, the essence of the Channel 46 night show never really did return. Babestation 1 hit Freeview in May 2009, but much of what had made Party Girls so exciting was lost. The novelty, the dynamic, interactively driven programme structures, the themes, fun tasks and events, the early (9pm) start, the long and entertaining introductions sometimes lasting an hour or more, the commitment to costumed roleplay, (cosplay) the powerfully sexual visuals, even the main core of nightly texters… All gone. On Freeview, there’s never been another babeshow like Party Girls, and it looks pretty certain now that there never will be.
By the 16th March ‘09 some of the live daytime programming had already disappeared from Channel 46. Longstanding day show The Chat, for example, left Freeview on Sunday 8th March, reverting to Sky-only status from the next day. Party Girls was the final broadcast on the original SmileTV2 channel (46), running from 9pm on 16th March ’09 to 05:30 the following morning. It featured Morgan (Preece), Donna Duke and former sextstation and British Pornstar, Dionne Mendez as the main hosts, and Charlie C as a special guest.
Charlie was a very well-liked Party Girl who’d been on the show from Day One, but the significance of bringing her in as a guest on this particular night was probably more connected with her historic contribution to the show three months earlier. On the night of 15th to 16th December 2008, a Charlie and Morgan 2 for 1 massage section officially became the first topless babeshow sequence on Freeview. There were topless sections before that on Party Girls, but not without nipple-tape, body-paint or ‘hand-bra’ protection. The 2 for 1 section featuring Morgan and Charlie on the final Party Girls show was a re-enactment of the historic lifting of the terrestrial babeshow nipple-ban where Charlie had Morgan pinned to the bed, while squirting her with virtually a whole bottle of cream.
The final night of Party Girls had cheap phone sex with calls priced at 75p per minute for the whole show (except via the mobile shortcode). The regular price had been £1.50 per minute, and whilst for the previous week adult phone chat call prices had been slashed to the half price rate from around 2am, this was the first time Party Girls had ever run for the whole 9pm to 05:30 period at 75p per minute.
FINAL FULL BABESHOWS SHOW SCHEDULE
At 21:00, Morgan and Donna introduced the show, and Donna was the first model to take calls, from around 21:10. After Donna’s first section, the programme up until midnight ran as follows…
- 21:40: Morgan, phonesex section.
- 22:10: Donna, phone section.
- 22:40: Dionne, phone section.
- 23:10: Morgan, phone section.
- 23:30: Morgan and Charlie, 2 for 1 ‘massage’ section.
Around midnight, Dionne performed a typical Party Girls costumed roleplay, after which she, Morgan and Donna continued regular half-hour-ish phone sections for the rest of the night. For the record, the girls’ final appearances were timed as follows…
- 04:15 – 04:45: Morgan.
- 04:45 – 05:05: Donna.
- 05:05 – 05:29: Dionne, the last onscreen model on Party Girls.
The text-driven themes and tasks for which Party Girls had become renowned, were absent on the final night, and had been dropped from the schedule more often than not over the previous ten days or so. But the compilation above gives an impression of the kind of fun that would take place in between the main phone sections.
THE END…
Whilst Dionne was the last pervcam model on screen, Donna and Morgan were chatting on the mic as the final show came to a close. Like the true babeshow trainspotter I am, I’ve transcribed the closing words from Donna and Morgan below…
DONNA: “We wanna say a great big thank you to all of you guys who have made Party Girls an absolutely amazing show to work on. Thank you for all your texts over the months that we’ve been on your screens. Thank you for all of your phonecalls. Thank you for every way in which you’ve participated, and we cannot wait to come back in a couple of weeks, with a vengeance… So stay tuned…”
MORGAN: “We love you lots like Jelly Tots.”
DONNA: “We do love you lots like Jelly Tots, (panicking, to squeeze in more than she has time to say) and… and we’ll find out when we’re on, and tell you – we love you (closing graphics cut in)…”
The broadcast was immediately followed by a static ad for the forthcoming Channel 50 babeshow, Partyland, but there was to be no more live TV on the Channel 46 incarnation of SmileTV2. It had served its purpose. The game-changing night time TV revolution had come to an end.
