Our involvement with
the programme started in late September 2006 when we were
approached by Unique Television, with complete secrecy, telling us
about the programme that they were producing. They were interested in us
making a contribution to the programme and providing some publicity.
By the time that we met with Fiona Clark (Producer), Mike
Brosnan (Executive Producer) and Chris Bellinger (Programme
Consultant) at the Unique Television offices in October, our
involvement had slightly changed path. We were asked if we could provide a
sub-site of Saturday Mornings not only to promote the programme,
but to also to act as a means for people to contact the production team
about such things as memories of the Saturday morning shows and the
stories behind their appearances on them.
The shell of the sub-site was in place within a few days, and the text
content and layout for the contact pages were supplied by Unique
Television the following week along with a number of images that were
used to brighten up the pages.
We were nearly caught out by the press release on 26 October being
made a good few hours earlier than planned, but within 15 minutes of
receiving a phone call from Fiona Clark the It Started With Swap Shop sub-site
was up and running and registering page hits. The main Saturday
Mornings site was also swamped with visitors - the equivalent of 36
times the normal daily page impressions were made in 9 hours, and since
the average daily traffic has more than doubled.
Emails and phone calls continued until the recording date as additional
features for the site were put in place to get some pictures sent in for
the set and to collate the data to compile the Top Ten Lists.
A week after the recording, we received a unexpected large package in
the post. This turned out to be from the Unique Television production
team and it contained all ten of the 'offers/wants' Top Ten Swap cards that
were displayed on the Top Ten Board at the beginning of the
programme. A fine memento of our involvement.
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