For many years, it was a simple system.

BBC1, BBC2, your local ITV region, and Channel 4. These four channels served viewers faithfully throughout the 80s and 90s, and much longer in the case of the two BBC channels and ITV.

Let's put ourselves right into 1995, and how each of the channels positioned themselves:

BBC1 was a general entertainment channel, housing popular cockney cocktails like EastEnders and Only Fools and Horses, reliable homegrown series including Jonathan Creek and Silent Witness, schedule staples including Top of the Pops and Tomorrow's World, and during the day, there was the hyperbolic Kilroy, euro-gameshow Going for Gold and smiley Aussie soap Neighbours.

On Saturdays after the all-day bonanza of Live and Kicking and Grandstand there would be family-pleasing frothy ratings bankers included the National Lottery and Noel's House Party, followed by the mood whiplash of Casualty, and then typically a US import like Chicago Hope or The X-Files. Sundays were an altogether more solemn affair, held together by the seemingly indestructible Last of the Summer Wine, about four crooked old Tories living in Yorkshire (sounds prime meat for a Channel 5 reboot) and gentle dramas like Ballykissangel.

BBC2 on the other hand was more individualistic and experimental.

There was a greater focus on new comedy, and was the home for the likes of Red Dwarf, Bottom, Shooting Stars and Never Mind the Buzzcocks. Drama usually consisted more of acquired fare from the US, typically Fox, with The X-Files starting on 2 before moving up to 1 due to it's popularity, a trope that has happened to many a BBC2 show over the years, with The Graham Norton Show, Line of Duty and Have I Got News for You also coming to mind.

BBC2 also featured more weighty programming than BBC1, including nightly current affairs dissection Newsnight, and the likes of Horizon and Arena sat alongside a barrage of one-off documentaries. Oh and Top Gear.

On the commercial side, ITV was the main one, and was beating BBC1's arse in the ratings right through the 90s.

Whilst the BBC was somewhat flailing in who to target BBC1 towards, ITV had their hearts set on an audience of mums and nans, with very little to virtually nothing of interest to the youth market, The Chart Show notwithstanding I suppose.

Coronation Street and Emmerdale reigned supreme (and in fact still do) alongside the now belated The Bill, and they were very much the king of "returning drama" with big hitters including the likes of Heartbeat, Peak Practice, London's Burning, Where the Heart Is, and about 50 different detective dramas, with the biggest one at the time being David Jason-starring A Touch of Frost.

Light entertainment wise, they had gameshows such as Gladiators, Family Fortunes, Catchphrase and Wheel of Fortune, as well as the mighty Cilla Black's two shows, Blind Date and Surprise Surprise. ITV were not, however, as interested in comedy, and aside from a few bland sitcoms here and there and the ever rotting corpse of Spitting Image hanging around, they stopped really caring with the conclusion of Watching in 1993, and their crushing axe of Men Behaving Badly that same year turning out to be brilliant for the BBC. ITV also held US shows in a minor contempt, with the only major stateside staple being the partly LWT-funded Baywatch.

ITV was, for all intents and purposes, the family friendly channel, less edgy than even BBC1 at it's friendliest, aimed primarily at easily offended nans and working class mums. It speaks volumes how they saw Tarrant on TV as their most boundary pushing show. By comparison, Channel 4, which competed more with BBC2, was all about being boundary pushing, and appealing to both the smart and sexy audiences, with comedy pullers including Friends, Frasier, Cheers, Ellen, Home Improvement, Father Ted, The Adam and Joe Show and Drop the Dead Donkey, and a commitment to quality stories from around the world, with US dramas, most notably NYPD Blue and ER, complimenting the Film on Four strand.

1989 ushered in a totally new era for British television however, with the launch of Sky Television.

Whilst it had a slow, slow start, things began to turn around with the acquisition of The Simpsons in 1990 (after the BBC rejected it after some thought, ITV turned it down flat on it's face, and Channel 4 were on a bit of a US slump and declined to pick it up) and of the newly formed Premier League in 1992. They also made some high profile grabs including the WWF and the Power Rangers, as well as inheriting the Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles (as they were known here back then as "Ninja" was deemed too violent) from BSB when they "merged" in November 1990.

Sky introduced the concept of multichannel television to Britain, expanding the choice of channels beyond the usual 4 to much more, each with their own niches and target demographics. The family had Sky One, Sky Movies and well, The Family Channel, the parents had VH1, the Discovery Channel and Sky News, the wives had UK Living, Sky Soap and TLC, the husbands had Sky Sports, the Sci-Fi Channel and the Paramount Comedy Channel, the teens had MTV, the kids had Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, TCC and the then-new Disney Channel, and the grandparents had UK Gold and Bravo. And it was just going to keep growing and growing.

Understandably, the main terrestrial broadcasters were looking keenly at the growing field.

It was also around this time (1995/96) that their dreams started to become a reality, at least for ITV, and Granada and Scottish both struck up deals with Sky to launch new channels. Scottish launched Sky Scottish, a two hour channel consisting seemingly of just repeats of Take the High Road and Scotland Today.

Granada Sky Broadcasting would launch with their own UK Gold equivalent, Granada Plus, which notably was set to air classic episodes of Coronation Street, then from 11:00 pm said channel would turn into Granada Men & Motors, a mix of boobs and cars aimed seemingly at angry pub-dwelling twats who probably watch a mix of That's TV and GB News these days.

There would also be Granada Good Life, an unremarkable lifestyle channel that within two years had evolved into Granada Breeze, and Talk TV, of no relation to the right-wing channel of the same name, which didn't even last a year before dying of heat exhaustion on the day Diana died, co-incidentally the same day that (one day before it's first birthday) the original incarnation of Sky 2 gave up and quit, handing it's keys (which it shared with Fox Kids in the day) to the National Geographic Channel.

Outside of Granada, in late 1995 Carlton bought up ailing cable-only channel SelecTV.

Which itself consisted near solely of basically every sitcom from the Marks & Gran library and a few scattered imports) which had launched only a few months earlier, and near instantly relaunched it by spring 1996 under the new name Carlton Select, in what would be the first instance of Carlton buying a channel and smothering their name all over it. Nice idents though. They also launched the cooking-based Carlton Food Network in its daytime downtime in September.

Sky's joint venture with STV led to the short-lived Sky Scottish, whilst United News and Media (they of Meridian, Anglia and HTV) were the first hands up Rapture TV's arse. Channel 4 didn't want to get into the multichannel business just yet at the time, instead doing business with the Paramount Comedy Channel for repeats of the likes of Father Ted and Drop the Dead Donkey, as well as the co-produced (with LWT) Spaced.

That just leaves Auntie Beeb.

You'd think they were not in the multichannel business at all, but in fact, they were, through their commercial division, BBC Enterprises, and they were there before Carlton Television was even broadcasting.

In 1992, the BBC joined up with moribund ITV franchisee Thames Television and US cable companies Tele-Communications Inc. and Cox Enterprises to form a new channel, UK Gold. BBC archive content on the channel would include repeats of EastEnders and Casualty from their first episodes, as well as Neighbours, as well as Doctor Who and a glut of classic comedy, the rights of which had previously been held by BSB's Galaxy, before it's absorption into Sky One left them homeless as they had no interest in UK made programmes at the time, being bunged onto a sort of burner channel called The Comedy Channel, which evolved into Sky Movies Gold.

UK Gold was a near instant success, and within a year, was a two channel network with the launch of female-focused UK Living, which transmitted same week repeats of Kilroy and BBC1's This Morning clone of the period, Good Morning with Anne & Nick, a show which seemed to change its title sequence once every 7.5 seconds.

A short while after UK Living went on air, TCI announced a deal for their 25% of UK Gold, and 31% of UK Living (as well as all of Bravo and more of The Children's Channel) to be sold to a UK-based company going by the name of Flextech.

Flextech, originally an oil company, made a major move into broadcasting and entertainment in the early 1990s, starting with a 23% acquisition of kiddie production company HIT Entertainment in 1990, and buying BT's 25% of The Children's Channel later that same year.

During the summer of 1993, Flextech got into bed with Pat Robertson's International Family Entertainment to launch a British version of The Family Channel.

IFE had bought the majority of the assets of ITV ex-franchise TVS when it closed at the end of 1992, and gave Flextech the rights to transmit a good deal of their archive, and The Maidstone Studios, handling the channel's uplink, playout and management operations. By 1995, with the help of new investors US West and Hallmark, Flextech bought their way to full control of The Children's Channel, and eventually, The Family Channel.

In August 1996, rumours began brewing that Flextech was looking to buy both Pearson (who had by then bought Thames) and Cox's shares in UK Gold and UK Living.

With the two channels forming part of a new 8 channel lineup. The rumours were confirmed in October, as were the plans for a mega lineup of new BBC-Flextech channels that would launch in 1997 and 1998.

The announcement of Flextech and the BBC's joint venture was made public in March 1997.

UK Living would be handed fully to Flextech, whilst UK Gold would be rebranded under the new name BBC Gold, and be joined by:

• BBC Showcase (general entertainment)
• BBC Catch-Up (repeats of BBC1 & BBC2 programmes)
• BBC One TV (a televised Radio 1 with comedy and music)
• BBC News 24 (news and current affairs)
• BBC Learning (educational programmes)
• BBC Style (lifestyle programmes)
• BBC Sport (sports coverage)
• BBC Horizon (documentaries)
• BBC Arena (arts and culture)

The announcement came one month after Flextech had carried out a major relaunch of their channel portfolio, relaunching Bravo as an adult entertainment channel with a focus on action and horror content, whilst launching teen channel Trouble during it's daytime hours (after an aborted plan to replace TCC with it), whilst The Family Channel was replaced by the gameshow-focused Challenge TV.

The original plan was for all of the new channels in Flex's deal with Auntie to carry BBC branding, whilst also carrying adverts.

The BBC disagreed on this however, feeling the inclusion of adverts would undermine the rationale of the licence fee, and be confusing for viewers. As a compromise, the plans for One TV, Style, Horizon and Arena were passed over to BBC Worldwide, and would involve Flextech. Catch-Up, Showcase, News 24, Learning and Sport on the other hand, would launch under the wing of the main BBC, with no adverts.

Exactly four weeks after the BBC relaunched with a new brand from Lambie-Nairn, the BBC-Flextech channels eventually launched under the UKTV banner.

At 6pm on Saturday 1st November 1997, with branding clearly mirroring the new look on Auntie to a tee, the only difference was the logo, which still bore a striking resemblance.

7 days, 23 and a half hours later, on Sunday 9th, the BBC launched BBC News 24 at 5:30pm.

Unlike the UKTV channels, which launched in a blaze of publicity, News 24 started in a far more low-key fashion, with it mostly being noted at the time for BBC One simulcasting the new channel every night, leading to the indefinite end of nightly closedowns.

With a look completely distinct from the BBC One news programmes at the time, the original incarnation of News 24 was branded by critics as feeling detached, lost and too bland, putting the need to act all chummy and friendly (no suits, just smart casual) ahead of the need to be high quality. It can be done well, look at 5 News, which launched earlier that year, which flipped the news format on its head with a pacy, quick-fire as then unseen on UK television.

With News 24 branded by many a waste of money, the BBC took the decision to launch Showcase and Catch-Up as a single channel, to be known as BBC Choice.

A name which was being used on digital teletext demos as early as January. BBC Choice was to be available on the new digital terrestrial platform On Digital, as well as on Sky Digital and on digital cable. The channel launched under Katherine Everett. She joined the BBC in 1975, as a costume assistant in Television Centre’s wardrobe stockroom, then became a telephone enquiry clerk, before gaining a place as a research assistant on a BBC graduate trainee scheme.

Her first major role of note at the BBC was as a producer for their 1980 dramatisation of Oppenheimer, before moving into factual, specifically science, working on the likes of Tomorrow's World, Horizon and QED, as well as several one-off documentaries.

Moving up the executive ladder, Everett would become BBC television’s budget negotiator for factual programming in 1993, the financial director for BBC1 in 1994, and by 1996 was said channel’s head of commissions and development, before moving onto running Choice in 1997.

Everett wanted BBC Choice to be seen as "a friendly channel".

Upon the channel launching, she had this to say: "We want BBC Choice to be a friendly channel, to give additional value to viewers, to take them behind the scenes of the BBC and give them a chance to participate in the channel."

The behind the scenes idea was taken very literally in BBC Choice's flagship show, Backstage, which aired at 6pm nightly, a show in which Julia Bradbury, amongst others, looked behind the scenes of BBC television programmes. It might have actually been pretty good, it certainly sounds it, but a telly nerd like me probably would have such an opinion. The general public, debatable.

The channel also mainly used that whole interactivity thang innit on their flagship show for sports, Row Z, which aired on Saturday nights in a very late slot directly following Match of the Day, which no doubt ran into Sunday morning on various occasions. The show itself had football fans talking football. That is it. That is all. Surely anyone wanting sports comment would have watched the then also new Sky Sports News, or stuck with Match of the Day before it? There was also the seemingly inevitable link to EastEnders, with behind-the-scenes show EastEnders Revealed, the only show to span the entirety of BBC Choice's life.

The channel launched on 23 September 1998, at midday.

So early that no digital television had even launched in the UK by that point, leading to the channel's launch being streamed online. BBC Choice launched on an annual budget of £20 million. By comparison, BBC One's budget was 45 times bigger at £900 million.

Within the walls of Television Centre, Choice was drawing comparisons with the original Radio 5 (before it was 5 Live) when it was a bizarre mix of Danny Baker, BFBS radio shows, sports coverage and some Andrew Sachs thing called Wiggly Park, which by 1998 was a BBC television series in its own right. It was directionless, original programming was scarce and often times amateurish, with Choice described as "bits and bobs of not very good programming". Friendly it may have been, but worth watching, it was not.

Within a year of it's launch, BBC Choice had dumped Katharine Everitt in favour of a new controller, Stuart Murphy.

Plucked from UK Play, the music & comedy channel aimed at a young audience that had launched around the same time as Choice, and was, as the name suggests, part of the BBC-Flextech group, having evolved from the planned BBC One TV, and with a far less confusing name.

On UK Play, Murphy had crafted a strong lineup of comedy, music and magazine shows fronted by Radio 1 personalities including Zoe Ball, Mark (Radcliffe) and Lard (Marc Riley) and Chris Moyles.

Spinoffs of BBC music shows such as Top of the Pops and The O Zone, and leveraging popular BBC2 comedy such as The Royle Family, The League of Gentlemen and The Fast Show.

Murphy wanted Choice to be positioned to an audience of adults aged 25-44, an audience who were deserting the BBC, branding it "boring" or "elitist", with many of the younger male audience scooped up by the edgy entertainment of Channel 4, the football, films and fucking of 5 and Sky One's diet of Simpsons, South Park and Stargate, whilst the irritable mums were courted by ITV's cosy, soapy lineup, Sky One's powerhouse double of Friends and ER, and the chat shows and dramas being served up on Living.

Near instantly, Murphy was throwing around the concept of "refreshing TV", with the goal to commission new shows and ideas, and change their approach to scheduling, doing things that would not be possible on either BBC One or BBC Two, highlighting the same-night repeats of EastEnders as an opportunity to do something the main BBC channels would never dare dream of. Behind the scenes, some people from within the BBC during 1999 saw Choice as a "BBC3 in the making", though Murphy disagreed.

The idea of a BBC Three was already around beforehand, primarily at the hands of the BBC's new director general Greg Dyke.

Who planned for it to be a "family channel" in a £100 million investment that would have also involved the launch of a children's channel and more investment into BBC Knowledge. In this incarnation, BBC Three would have launched with a focus on consumer and leisure shows as well as upmarket dramas, modelled heavily on BBC One during that era, which was focused at the time on renovation shows such as Changing Rooms and Ground Force. There would also be plans for BBC3 to broadcast live sport and coverage of Glastonbury.

Sooner than later, the plan was to make these ideas reality, but tweaks would be made that would help the planned new third, Knowledge and children's channels come along, tweaks that would directly involve BBC Choice.

April 2000 saw sweeping schedule changes on both BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge.

Designed to pitch the channels towards more niche audiences, and to cut the crap both channels had been pulling. Knowledge dumped it's children's programming and "breezy learning" programmes in favour of a fully documentary-led format, whilst Choice was to focus on a younger audience whilst retaining repeats of BBC One and Two programmes.

The early evening Backstage and Breakers block went bye-bye as Choice lost it's first two hours of the day, now starting at 7:00pm, with the entirety of daytime now the domain of CBBC on Choice, a 13-hour block of programming every day from 6:00am which superseded the existing CBBC Choice, simultaneously leading to the axing of Dog & Dinosaur and the repeats of Blue Peter and Live & Kicking.

The new children's block was aimed primarily at a preschool audience, the Teletubbies, Tweenies, Pingu and Playdays all the way. The stuff plucked from the older side of CBBC also seemed to be ones that had younger appeal as well, with gameshow repeats and ChuckleVision also amongst the lineup.

After 7pm, BBC Choice would make a notable effort to go after a younger audience than either BBC One and BBC Two.

In an attempt to distinguish the channel from being just a repeats channel. The first major move in this direction came a month and a half later. Liquid News with Christopher Price began on 31 May 2000. The show had evolved out of Zero 30, an entertainment news show which had been running for two years on BBC News 24. The show had been axed there as the channel was looking to focus more on rolling news to be better compatible with BBC World.

The show took what Zero 30 had been doing at 12:30am (rather aptly) and transplanted it into a primetime slot at 8:30pm, on a bigger budget and a more bespoke branding style. It was quite unlike any other BBC News programme at the time, eschewing the David Lowe style music in favour of Moby's Bedhead. It had an attitude unlike any other entertainment news show, ribbing at celebrity affairs unlike other attempts at showbizzy news programmes beforehand, as well as doing bits about people who the Choice audience probably didn't give two about, covering the deaths of Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan.

No longer could BBC Choice announcers joke about how it was a fully repeats based channel ("not as live as on BBC1 last Friday, this is BBC Choice after all" comes to mind) as it finally had a programme that was live, every weeknight. And it was kicking the arse of everything else they were airing.

The channel also really doubled down on the whole "Refreshing TV" idea.

With the launch of another sub-brand, Micro TV, a range of shows only 15 minutes in length. Among these were Hotlinks, a hyper futuristic entertainment magazine hosted by a search engine given human flesh (calling herself an "infomaniac") with the name Nomy and celeb documentary strand So Far.

By early July, with the new schedule all sorted, the channel had it's first rebrand. Choice had dumped every ident bar the hearts ident when the channel refreshed in April, and it was made more obvious when a "remixed" take on the ident debuted, which lasted about a year and pissed off many ident enthusiasts at the time, with the idents (of which there were two - green and pink) being labelled lazy and dull.

July also saw the launch on Choice of a new comedy show, The RDA.

Standing for the Recommended Daily Allowance, a daily topical show which aired at 11:00pm, and presented by then-rising star John Gordillo.

The show was little watched, but was loved by those who did, with the show gaining something of a cult following, primarily for its bizarre, hit-or-miss style of humour. Gordillo was very nearly offered the role of host on Have I Got News for You following the sacking of original host Angus Deayton, losing the role to Alexander Armstrong, before someone had a change of heart and deciding on the show going to a fully guest host based model, which is how it remains today.

The whole reason for the BBC reformatting Choice and Knowledge eventually became clear in August 2000.

When then-new BBC director general Greg Dyke (formerly of TV-am, GMTV and LWT) announced a major reform of the BBC's digital channels, with BBC Choice and Knowledge to be closed "as soon as possible" and be replaced by BBC Three and BBC Four, and launch two new children's channels, an unnamed channel targeted at teenagers, and a preschool channel to be known provisionally as BBC Playbox.

BBC Three would build upon what BBC Choice was cultivating, and would retain the same team. BBC Three would skew younger than BBC One, BBC Two and especially BBC Four, and going head-to-head with the likes of Channel 4's upcoming E4, Sky One, MTV and the Paramount Comedy Channel with a lineup that was to be heavy on new comedy, fresh drama, as well as music, reality, news and documentaries.

BBC Choice fixtures including Liquid News, sideshows such as EastEnders Revealed, US programmes and repeats of popular BBC One and Two shows would also continue to be shown on the new channel, whilst some of BBC Three's intended programmes would trickle onto BBC Choice in anticipation of the eventual launch.

BBC Choice continued to swim on throughout the rest of 2000.

Adding Friday repeats of Casualty to follow Liquid News on said night, and being quick to exploit the success of The Weakest Link (which launched around the same time the plans to kill Choice were made public) with near endless repeats. The same was also true of the cult metal-mashing gameshow Robot Wars, a perennial favourite of BBC Two's post-Simpsons slot on Fridays by then, which Choice developed an obsession for during the early half of the 2000s.

On air whilst this was happening was the start of a new sitcom on BBC Two.

Two Pints of Lager and a Packet of Crisps, originally set for a debut in 2000 (when the show was produced), started in February 2001. The pub comedy paired ex-Hollyoaks stars Will Mellor and Natalie Casey with The Royle Family's Sheridan Smith and Ralf Little, as well as Coronation Street's Beverley Callard, and Kathryn Drysdale in her first regular television role.

The show was launched with almost instant division. For the most part, the show was reviled for it's overtly sexual humour, as if it was wacking you over the head with a bat that had "ADULTS ONLY" scrawled over it. It positioned itself as a sort of "junior Coupling", a more early twentysomething companion to BBC Two's highly popular sitcom about the sex lives of thirtysomethings that had launched the previous year.

Whilst Two Pints was raunchy, it was hardly anything that South Park wasn't doing to huge success over on Channel 4, if anything the swearing was tamer, as whereas Cartman and company said "fuck" near endlessly, the Runcorn crew would use it only once per series, the series finale. Being on BBC Two, a channel not as known as C4 for being risky, probably didn't do anything to help. The show was very much aimed at a young audience, and was written, appropriately enough, by the then 20-year-old Susan Nickson.

The show was probably close to the axe, but the decision was eventually made to move Two Pints to BBC Choice for it's second series.

With the view to eventually have it on the rechristened BBC Three. Doing this was pretty much a slam dunk for the BBC, giving the new channel an established comedy series and one which was already known to piss off the older folk, a show that could only really work on a youth-focused channel like Choice. BBC Two would continue to repeat the show, but thrown into later, post-Newsnight slots most of the time.

2001 was the year BBC Choice began to really morph into BBC Three.

It was out with the heart idents and in with a new, playful ident set depicting three orange blocks floating about in a green void, although they later switched it into a more deep blue, with an upbeat and dancy soundtrack to the new look.

Shortly beforehand, Liquid News, in a huge vote of confidence from within the BBC, had also upgraded it's image. Christopher was still there, as was Bedhead and the "L circle" logo, but a lavish new studio, a white set with large screens surrounding it, with the programme’s liquid graphics in the background.

Weekly recap editions also began being produced for BBC One, the first time a show from one of the BBC's digital channels had gotten a spot on one of the big boy channels. Technically BBC Knowledge's DynaMo beat it to the punch, having debuted on BBC Two in 1998 in the build up to the launch of the new channel, but as a schools programme, it might as well not count.

On 6 August 2001, Liquid News moved to 7:00pm, kicking off the channel's day.

Three weeks beforehand on 16 July, 60 Seconds was launched. The bulletin, commissioned in December 2000 with the primary intention of anchoring the rebranded BBC Three when it was to launch, was a quick fire bulletin broadcast once every 2 hours, four times a night (7pm, 9pm, 11pm and 1am) with a blue colour scheme clearly echoing Liquid News.

BBC Director of Television Mark Thompson made a highly public admission that "not enough thought or money" had been allocated to the initial development of BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge.

The BBC’s annual report, released in July 2001, acknowledged that BBC Choice "could have been better thought out" and revealed a commitment of an additional £100 million to "developing ideas" for BBC3.

However, there was still no indication of when Government approval might be granted. Plans to launch two new children's channels in the summer, followed by BBC3 and BBC4 in the Autumn, were abandoned after the Government went into recess without reaching a decision.

The BBC had submitted its response to private sector concerns in May, but the Government extended the period for further broadcaster feedback until the end of July. "We can only assume that the strong opposition to the BBC’s plans has prompted the Department for Culture, Media and Sport to take a closer look," an ITV source remarked.

Whilst BBC Four, Playbox and the teen channel were approved after government approval was continually delayed by the 2001 general election and a change in Culture Secretary from Chris Smith to the Tessa Jowell.

BBC Three was rejected by her in September 2001 (whilst BBC Four, the children's channels and radio stations got the green light) on the basis it was too similar to existing cable and satellite channels.

Channel 4, Sky and Nickelodeon were amongst those kicking up a stink about BBC Three's existence, particularly as they were the channels that would face the most competition.

The government was very critical of the plan to broadcast some American programmes on BBC Three. BBC Two aired many US series (primarily sitcoms and sci-fi) in the early evening schedules, with The Simpsons, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Malcolm in the Middle and Star Trek: Voyager notable staples in the post-Weakest Link slot around the time.

BBC Choice had at the time been running the US version of Queer as Folk (originally a Channel 4 show) and The Practice, the lawyer drama that was huge in America but never made the big time internationally, ITV and Sky One having both disowned it after the first season before the BBC took it on in 2001 with the first season again, 4 years behind the US by that point.

The government wanted more news and documentaries as well, stating that one-minute bulletins were not good enough, and that Liquid News was an entertainment programme, not a news programme. BBC Four and "Children's B" were both to feature news programmes, with BBC Four News on the former and Newsround the latter. With this being the case, Blair's boys saw no excuse for BBC Three to limit things to a paltry 4 minutes a day.

Following this renewed push towards launching the new channel, even if not in name, the BBC announced a television adaptation of the Radio 4 comedy sketch show Little Britain from Matt Lucas and David Walliams, while bringing Dom Joly over from Channel 4.

Johnny Vaughan, another C4 defectee, started a new chat show which premiered on BBC Choice on 7th January 2002, airing at 7 pm Monday to Wednesday and acting as a replacement for the axed RDA. After a shaky start, the show eventually found its footing.

In February, the BBC launched its two new children’s channels, CBBC and CBeebies, joined in March by the launch of BBC4 and 6 Music on radio.

However, Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell requested further clarification on BBC3's lineup. The demand came amid the continuing temper tantrums from Channel 4, ITV, Channel 5, and Sky, who argued that BBC3 would be nothing more than light entertainment. They got their way in the end as Jowell, reportedly on the night before giving the green light, told the BBC to go fuck themselves, roping the ITC in to assess BBC3’s potential impact on advertising revenue for rival networks.

The BBC's reaction was understandably livid. "This announcement has been greeted here like a cup of cold sick. We are furious," said one executive. New BBC Chairman Gavyn Davies, however, remained composed. "BBC3 will feature overwhelmingly domestic content," he emphasized. "Channel 4 has achieved its success partly through American imports, and E4 is heavily reliant on them. BBC3, on the other hand, will have an explicit public service orientation that I don’t believe E4 - or even Channel 4 - has. When I look at the Channel 4 programmes that best fit my definition of public service, they are not actually watched by young people."

It was, as far as everyone was concerned, a rocky time for BBC Three's development, and it only got worse.

On the evening of 21 April 2002, Christopher Price, the man who was to be the bright star of the new channel, passed away of heart failure, caused by meningoencephalitis, an 'extremely rare' condition that had most likely spread from an ear infection that he had in the week before his death, and which had led him to not appear on Liquid News in that period. He was found dead by close friend Robert Nisbet (at the time a chief correspondent for Liquid News) the following day.

Christopher was, without a doubt, set to be a major star on the BBC. He had been set to present live coverage of the 2002 Eurovision Song Contest on BBC Choice, and had presented that year's A Song for Europe, which was his first primetime exposure on BBC One.

By July 2002, the ITC had, to most people's surprise, sided with the Corporation.

Under strict conditions - including a 90% quota for British programming to clearly differentiate BBC3 from Sky One and E4, along with minimum requirements for news and current affairs - the ITC reluctantly deemed the channel "manageable" and acknowledged its potential value. They projected that within two to three years, BBC3 would secure an audience share of around 2%, leading to an estimated £7 million annual loss in advertising revenue for rival broadcasters.

Momentum further swung in the BBC's favor that same month when, alongside Crown Castle, it won the bid to operate the UK's terrestrial digital network, taking over from the collapsed ITV Digital.

On Tuesday 17 September the Government finally gave the go-ahead for BBC3.

Although with Jowell pissing all over the party with the unlikely warning that she would get the channel closed if the Corporation failed to meet a number of strict public service undertakings. Indeed, the rules were clear: "Programming must be of a consistently innovative and risk-taking character ... I am determined BBC3 should be a distinctive public service channel that is not competing with what is already out there in a vigorous marketplace."

On screen, Liquid News was given a top-to-toe revamp in October 2002.

Bringing in not one, but two new permanent presenters from the post-Christopher era to the Colin & Claudia era, with Colin Patterson, now a BBC entertainment correspondent within BBC News itself, and Claudia Winkleman, and you have to wonder what she is up to these days. This era did well enough, but the resounding agreement is that it could never top Christopher's time on the show.

Eventually, just before Christmas 2002, the death knell was well and truly sounding for Choice.

As the three boxes were replaced by a new ident set, depicting a blue construction site. Every so often, a Three would flash up, confirming the inevitable that this was setting up the launch of BBC Three.

The schedules also became even more stale than before, with neverending repeats of Robot Wars (in what would be that show's lemming march on the BBC before moving to the newly rebranded Five) and Two Pints of Lager, as well as the soaps and some films, in a seemingly deliberate attempt to make BBC Choice look crap before BBC Three came along.

Even Liquid News went on a week-long break during Choice's final week, as the schedules became polluted with previews of what was to be from the following week, bookended with the near obligatory Wars and Pints. The final programme shown on BBC Choice, on the early hours of Saturday 8th February, was the interview between Christopher Price and Kylie Minogue, with the entirety of the Saturday night schedule previews for BBC Three.

BBC Choice died for realsies on the early hours of the 9th, before the reincarnated BBC Three went on air at 7:00pm on Sunday 9th February 2003.

In a simulcast on BBC Two, with Johnny Vaughan "presenting" the first few hours, linking into a new series of his show, as well as Choice defect Re:covered with Dermot O'Leary, the return of Liquid News (albeit only for ten minutes), and the pilot of Little Britain.

After BBC Two pissed off for snooker coverage at 9pm, BBC Three had Paul & Pauline Calf, Body Hits, Burn It, another 10 minutes of Liquid News, Monkey Dust and 3 Non-Blondes. First looks of 24 before BBC Two (which had previously been on BBC Choice) would be the only American programme on the original lineup.

That much heralded news show was quite literally called The News Show, presented by Julian Worricker, moving over from 5 Live Breakfast, as well as Tazeen Ahmad from 60 Seconds, and a new addition, Sangita Myska, later of LBC. The show was not a success, and by March was getting audiences of zero. Worricker buggered off pretty quickly and was replaced by Ben McCarthy, formerly of ITN.

By July, it was moved to 7pm and as such, became The 7 O'Clock News. It was relaunched again in May 2004, in the impact of Liquid News ending its run the run the month before, becoming a full half hour show with Eddie Mair (who juggled the job with hosting PM on Radio 4) as well as Ahmad and Myska. LN's Paddy O'Connell also joined the team.

BBC Three itself went through its early years primarily focused on factual, comedy and original drama.

There was a British version of The Bachelor, ITV reject and former Choice show The Practice filled the import void left by 24's switch to Sky, and they had a Strictly Come Dancing sideshow which by series 2 had moved up a channel and evolved into It Takes Two, in one of many attempts by BBC2 to replace The Simpsons.

The channel's first major push into a specific genre came in about 2005 or so when, hot of the heels of Jo Frost's Supernanny - which had launched the previous year on Channel 4 and within six months had a US adaption on ABC - BBC Three decided to commit themselves towards shows about naughty children being tamed. Shows included The House of Tiny Tearaways, Who Rules the Roost, Little Angels, and Honey… We're Killing the Kids, the latter of which is mainly notable for its Ukrainian adaptation spawning the "Angry Ukrainian Boy" meme.

It was a fairly short lived phase though, as by 2006, the focus was back on scripted series.

With the launch of the much-hyped "adults only" Doctor Who spin-off Torchwood, Little Miss Jocelyn, a sketch show vehicle for Jocelyn Jee Esien of 3 Non-Blondes, and in 2007, Gavin & Stacey. Family Guy, which had originally been bought for BBC2 (presumably to replace The Simpsons, albeit in a later slot) also came to the channel and proved the channel's biggest and most reliable success.

BBC Three would continue to evolve over the years, with new looks in 2008, 2013 and 2016, before closing and coming back in 2022. You have probably heard the story many times.