Lifestyle (British TV channel)

Lifestyle was launched on 30 October 1985 and initially available on various cable networks such as Rediffusion Cablevision in parts of the United Kingdom[3] and Cablelink in parts of Ireland.[4] Lifestyle's daytime lineup mainly consisted of magazines, novelas and movies within the programming was linked by an in-vision continuity announcer David Hamilton. By the late 1980s, the channel was showing a range of classic American comedies, crime dramas (such as Divorce Court and Remington Steele) along with film noir classics from the 1940s and 1950s, as well as the daily exercise routine shows such as Charlene Prickett's It Figures and Keep Fit also included. The channel was broadcast from facilities at Molinare, another company owned at the time by WHSmith Group.

In August 1989, Lifestyle's transmission time was extended and it aired 10.00am to 6.00pm and this coincided with the channel becoming more associated with the Sky Television brand by becoming part of its advertising campaigns for the Astra satellite on which the Sky channels and Lifestyle could be seen. The channel broadcast the successful chat show Sally Jessy Raphael along with several popular American gameshows including Classic Concentration, The Joker's Wild, Tic-Tac-Dough and Supermarket Sweep. More recent programming was also acquired, and Australian series including Rafferty's Rules, Cop Shop and Skyways aired along with American soap operas Search for Tomorrow and The Edge of Night.

In 1990, the transponder was used to broadcast the Lifestyle Satellite Jukebox, a music video request channel from 10.00pm to 6.00am. The hours between the ending of Lifestyle's programmes and the start of Satellite Jukebox were filled by the Sell-a-Vision home shopping service. For a time, The Children's Channel also transmitted on transponder 5, airing during the early morning before Lifestyle programming started.

The channel never achieved huge ratings and closed on 24 January 1993. Its most popular shows were moved to Sky One and Astra's transponder 5 was taken over the following day by German language channel VOX.[1]

At 7.57pm, continuity announcer Kate Ricketts stated that "this brings us to the end of weekend Lifestyle, and sadly, to the end of the Lifestyle channel".[5] She and David Hamilton also exchanged gifts[6] and both said goodbye to the viewers while thanking them for having made Lifestyle "such a great channel to work for".[7] On the cable broadcast just after 7.59pm, cable operator Videotron added a scrolling message stating:[8]

We have just been informed by the owners of LIFESTYLE that this channel will permanently closedown at 8pm on SUNDAY, JANUARY 24. We apologise for the unforeseen loss of this channel which is entirely beyond Videotron's control.

Credits of every staff member who worked for the channel rolled, before the station ident played one last time and the logo dissolved on air. The transmission ceased immediately at 8.00pm and the VOX logo appeared with text reading 'From 25 January 1993 this channel [is available]',[9] and launched the following day.

Lifestyle's sister network, Screensport was shut down on 1 March. This permanently ended WHSmith's involvement with television. A new women's network called UK Living launched a few months later as part of the Sky Multichannels package on 1 September 1993.