Wire TV was a short-lived British cable television channel produced by United Artists Cable and featured a range of entertainment, lifestyle and sports programming. Branded "The Cable Network", the channel was originally set up and funded with £25m by Cable Program Partners, a consortium of UK cable operators including NYNEX, US West and Comcast, to bolster alternative content to the satellite-dominated multi-channel environment of the time. Broadcast from a converted unit in The Galleries shopping centre, Bristol, Wire TV broadcast on weekdays and weekends from 1pm to 11pm with regional opt-outs from 5pm to 7pm each evening when operators could insert their own local programmes.
Programming
Daytime schedules consisted of talk-based Afternoon Live, quiz shows such as Lingo, soap operas and comedies. Evenings included phone-ins and Sportswire which featured Vauxhall Conference football and boxing. Weekend schedules consisted of 'best of' repeats and omnibus editions of weekday soaps including Richmond Hill, The Bold and the Beautiful and Santa Barbara. Presenters included Kathryn Apanowicz, Nino Firetto, Rhodri Evans, Fenella George and also Femi Oke who co-hosted the weekend show Soap On The Wire with TV and soap opera expert Chris Stacey. The show proved popular with students and housewives alike and towards the end of 1993 was taking over 200 calls in the four hours it was on air. Producers tried to revamp it into a daily show but Stacey had other commitments and was reduced to one appearance a week so the other experts / co-presenters such as Darren Gray, Jamie Carrington-Colby, Darren Edwards and Richard Arnold were featured more frequently throughout late 1993 and 1994 all proved less popular than Stacey. As part of a revamp in 1994, Mike Morris and Georgey Spanswick went on the road in a bright yellow-liveried bus which was converted into an outside broadcast unit and toured the country, spending a week at a time in different cable franchise areas. The previous varied programming was reduced as Sports programming was expanded in a deal with Chrysalis Sport. Additionally, the live broadcast rights to screen Lennox Lewis's WBC title fights and the 1996 Cricket World Cup were secured.
Closure
Plans to hive off Sportswire into a separate channel came to nothing. In 1995, Wire TV was sold to Mirror Television, a Mirror Group plc subsidiary, and closed in order to make way for L!VE TV.
Trivia
Although branded "The Cable Network", Wire TV relied on satellite distribution to cable headends across the UK. Intelsat 601 was used and Wire TV was broadcast alongside both The Parliamentary Channel and The Learning Channel using the first digitally-compressed uplink service from the UK.
In 1994, Wire TV's backers outbid BSkyB for the rights to screen the 1996 Cricket World Cup in a £7.5 million deal. It was the first major national sporting event ever to be acquired for a UK cable channel.
