The channel was proposed by David Montgomery as MGN's first foray into pay television. At its launch in 1995, the station was headed by Kelvin MacKenzie with Janet Street-Porter as Managing Director and a team of young "tellybrats". Street-Porter left after only five months due to repeated clashes with MacKenzie over content and was replaced with Mark Cullen. MacKenzie went on to create a number of programmes that received much media coverage but low viewer figures. Considered cheap and always accused of poor taste, the channel never captured more than 1% of the British television audience under MGN, and at the worst of its fortunes was losing around £7 million a year. It was often described as "tabloid television", in no small part due to its control by MGN and the fact that MacKenzie had formerly been editor of The Sun. Amongst its better known programmes were Topless Darts (with commentary supplied by comedian Jimmy Frinton), the surreal talent show Spanish Archer, Talgarth Trousers (a comedy sketch show) and Canary Wharf, a soap opera, which used the station's offices in the Docklands as a set. Other regular features were the weather, read in Norwegian by a blonde model (Eva Bjertnes or Anne-Marie Foss) wearing a bikini, Britain's Bounciest Weather with Rusty Goffe (probably most well known, although uncredited, for his appearance as an Oompa Loompa in the 1971 film Willy Wonka and The Chocolate Factory) who due to his small stature, would bounce on a trampoline while doing the forecast (bouncing higher the further north he was talking about), and the News Bunny, a person in a rabbit suit who would stand behind a newsreader and make appropriate gestures and expressions for each of the items. A typical early show from the channel was a two-hour afternoon piece based around viewers' submitted wedding videos. By the second week only one video had been sent in, and on phoning the participants in order to have a "live commentary", the presenters were informed that the couple were too busy shopping to be involved. Shortly before its demise in 1999, it is said that the channel would bid for rights to show the English Premiership, but it is not clear whether this was a publicity stunt or not. By this time, the channel had increasingly moved over to showing soft porn.
In 1994, ABC's World News Now was the first television show to be broadcast over the Internet, using the CU-SeeMe videoconferencing software. The term IPTV first appeared in 1995 with the founding of Precept Software by Judith Estrin and Bill Carrico. Precept designed and built an internet video product named "IP/TV". IP/TV was an MBONE compatible Windows and Unix based application that moved single and multi-source audio/video traffic, ranging from low to DVD quality, using both unicast and IP multicast RTP/RTCP. The software was written primarily by Steve Casner, Karl Auerbach, and Cha Chee Kuan. Precept was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1998. Cisco retains the "IP/TV" trademark. Internet radio company AudioNet started the first continuous live webcasts with content from WFAA-TV in January, 1998 and KCTU-LP on January 10, 1998. Kingston Communications, a regional telecommunications operator in UK, launched KIT (Kingston Interactive Television), an IPTV over DSL broadband interactive TV service in September 1999 after conducting various TV and VoD trials. The operator added additional VoD service in October 2001 with Yes TV, a provider VoD content. Kingston was one of the first companies in the world to introduce IPTV and IP VOD over ADSL. In the past, this technology has been restricted by low broadband penetration. In the coming years, however, residential IPTV is expected to grow at a brisk pace as broadband was available to more than 200 million households worldwide in the year 2005, projected to grow to 400 million by the year 2010. Many of the world's major telecommunications providers are exploring IPTV as a new revenue opportunity from their existing markets and as a defensive measure against encroachment from more conventional Cable Television services. In the mean time, there are thousands of IPTV installations within schools, corporations, and other institutions that do not require the use of wide area connectivity. It is important to note that historically there have been many different definitions of "IPTV" including elementary streams over IP networks, transport streams over IP networks and a number of proprietary systems. Although (in Mid 2007) it is premature to say that there is a full consensus of exactly what IPTV should mean, there is no doubt that the most widely used definition today is for single or multiple program transport streams which are sourced by the same network operator that owns or directly controls the "Final Mile" to the consumer's premises. This control over delivery enables a guaranteed quality of service, and also allows the service provider to offer an enhanced user experience such as better program guide, interactive services etc.
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