Back in the late 1990s and early to mid 2000s, when I was in the last years of Secondary School, as well as all the way through my years at College and University, my Sundays were pretty much always spent watching T4 on Channel 4. I remember the days when it featured now incredibly popular presenters Dermot O'Leary and Vernon Kay, as well as Ben Shepherd and Steve Jones.
For me, throughout the years T4 was all about watching a variety of different entertainment shows, such as: Shipwrecked, As If, Beauty and the Geek, Dawson's Creek, Futurama, The O.C., and Channel 4 soap Hollyoaks.
To say that I have a lot of memories of the show is a complete understatement. So, the news that Channel 4 is canceling the show - whilst not entirely surprising - is still a little sad.
The reason that this doesn't shock me too much, is purely due to the rise of Channel 4 spin-off channel E4, which ultimately features all of the shows that a programme like T4 was initially set-up for. I can imagine that back in 1998/99, the real aim behind T4 was as a possible rival to Saturday/Sunday morning television shows like SM:tv which were of course aimed at a young age-range.
However, over the past ten years, the rise of digital television (including the move to completely digital viewing, with the demise of terrestrial) has also seen the demise of Saturday morning kids television. This perhaps suggests that viewers prefer entire channels dedicated to showing specific programmes of interest, rather than watching a magazine-style programme that is part of a bigger channel.
Even though I haven't a clue who most of the presenters are on the show now, I feel like I did a lot of growing up watching T4, so when December comes around it will definitely feel like the end of an era.
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