Trouble was a subscription television channel operating in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

and

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

that was owned and operated by Virgin Media Television. Trouble had a key demographic of young adults and teenagers, aged between 15 and 24. The channel aired primarily American and

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

n imports, with only a small margin of programmes being British.

History

In 1992, now-defunct television channel The Children's Channel restructured its late-afternoon programming to focus on a teenage audience, by launching a block called "TCC". TCC ran initially from 5:00pm-7:00pm but beginning on 1 September 1993 to coincide with the launch of The Family Channel and

Sky Multichannels Sky Multichannels was a package of analogue television services offered by BSkyB on the Astra satellites at 19.2° east from 1 September 1993 to 27 September 2001, which started off with 15 channels before expanding to over 40. History Overv ...

, the channel's space was changed to end at 5:00pm, including the TCC block, which now started at 3:00pm. Beginning on 3 February 1997, the TCC block was spun-off by Flextech into its own channel - Trouble, running from 12:00pm-8:00pm, timesharing with Bravo, which had removed its daytime broadcast hours in order to focus more on an adult male audience. On 3 April 1998, Flextech closed down The Children's Channel without prior warning, with the company citifying that they wanted to focus more on the teenage market. With this, Trouble expanded its broadcast hours and now started at 7.00am, although it remained timesharing with Bravo while TCC's former slot became home to TV Travel Shop. Trouble's programming consisted more of popular sitcoms, rather than the cartoons The Children's Channel originally aired. On Sky Digital and NTL, Trouble was in the children's section, due to being a channel aimed at teenage year groups. However, on Telewest, it was in the entertainment section. In 2003, a timeshift network - Trouble Reload, launched on Sky Digital. It was added to Telewest on 21 July 2003. In 2006, Trouble was restructured to focus more explicitly on the teenage audience, with the channel moving out of the "Kids" package on Sky and to the "Entertainment" package, and gained a new ident package. The timeshift service - Trouble Reload, was renamed to Trouble +1.

Closure

On 3 February 2009, it was announced that Trouble +1 would close down on 5 February and would be replaced with Living2 +1, a timeshift service of

Living2 Real Lives was a British television channel owned by Sky, a division of Comcast. It used to be the sister channel of Sky Living Sky Living was a British pay television television channel, channel owned and operated by Sky Limited, Sky. The ch ...

. Following this news, on 17 March, Virgin Media Television announced that they would close down Trouble outright and replace it with an unknown

Living Living or The Living may refer to: Common meanings *Life, a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms ** Living species, one that is not extinct *Personal life, the course of an individual human's life * ...

network, later revealed to be a two-hour timeshift of the main channel. The channel was closed in April that year after 12 years airing and was replaced with Living +2 that day.

References

External links

Trouble at TV Ark
{{Living TV Group 1997 establishments in the United Kingdom 2009 disestablishments in the United Kingdom Defunct television channels in the United Kingdom Living TV Group channels Television channels and stations disestablished in 2009 Television channels and stations established in 1997