Bid TV
Bid TV, which launched as Bid-Up.TV on 5 October 2000 and ended its life as Shop at Bid, was Britain's first television auction shopping channel and, in its own claim, the world's first channel of its kind. Owned by Bid Shopping (originally Sit-Up Shopping), it ran daily live auctions on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media, with a sister channel, Price Drop (originally Price-Drop TV). After nearly fourteen years on air, the channel's owner went into administration on 17 April 2014, and Shop at Bid closed down with immediate effect, costing 229 jobs.
Launch as Bid-Up.TV
The channel was launched by Sit-Up Shopping in October 2000. It originally broadcast twelve hours a day, much of which was pre-recorded, with auction graphics overlaid so that viewers could bid. Over time Bid began airing live broadcasts for almost eighteen hours a day, with recorded TV Shopping Network presentations filling its downtime. The channel quickly amassed a cult following as it spread across digital platforms. Part of its early popularity came from its use of David Dickinson, the former presenter of the BBC's Bargain Hunt, in television advertising campaigns.
In November 2001, Bid-Up launched on NTL, the cable operator. In June 2003, Sit-Up Shopping launched the sister channel Price-Drop TV. The two channels would operate side by side for the rest of Bid's life, sharing studios, presenters and ownership.
How the auctions worked
Each item was advertised with a specific quantity and a "bid-up from" price triangle. Customers phoned in and bid up from that amount. The quantity determined who won: if fifty items were available, the top fifty bidders won the auction. In April 2004, the channel introduced a system called Best Bidding, under which all bids acted as proxy bids — instead of choosing the amount, the computer automatically entered an "upto" amount that would not exceed the value the bidder specified. At the end of each auction, everyone paid the same price shown in the on-screen "auction arrow", making it effectively a uniform-price auction.
In August 2004, the channel held an "Auction Choice" month, featuring both rising-price and falling-price auction hours. The falling-price auctions continued after that month and eventually became the channel's standard format, in which the price dropped until the available stock sold out. Before December 2004, each item also carried a "guide price", described as the manufacturer's recommended retail price or an average of prices from other retailers, but these were removed after the collapse of the rival shopping channel Auction World.tv, which had been criticised for misleading guide prices.
Rebrand to Bid TV
On 21 January 2005, the channel was rebranded as Bid TV, a name that reflected the fact that most of its auctions now followed the falling-price format of Price-Drop TV — viewers were only rarely bidding "up" any more. Rising-price auctions were no longer offered. In October 2005, a new graphic was added showing the start price of falling-price auctions.
When the channel originally launched, one of its most popular features was the relaxed style in which presenters and assistants interacted with each other — the incoming presenter would appear on air during the final minutes of the previous presenter's shift. That casual interaction was largely stopped with the launch of Bid TV, although the presenters retained some of the channel's traditions: they exclusively referred to products as "lots" and customers as "bidders", and announced the next item by saying "Closing next...". In May 2006 the on-screen graphics were changed so that products were sold in pounds and pence rather than whole pounds, a change previously made on Price-Drop TV.
The website and multi-buy era
In early 2006 the channel's website was overhauled to be more user-friendly, with a new design inspired by eBay, the world's most popular auction website — an attempt to capitalise on eBay's popularity. Customers could place bids for items on the website if they were registered, which let them avoid the premium-rate phone charge, though postage and packaging still applied.
In August 2007, the channel began selling products with choices: on certain items, often bedding or clothes, customers could choose the size or colour by pressing a telephone button. The graphics for these auctions showed the start price, the current price, the quantity of the main choice and a list of options; when the main-choice item sold out, the price locked and everyone paid that amount. In January 2008, to promote the Sit-Up sister channels Price-Drop TV and Speed-Auction TV, a small preview of what was on sale on each channel was shown before each auction. In September 2008, all three Sit-Up channels removed start prices from their on-screen graphics, though they still appeared on the websites.
10th birthday and studio renewal
On 5 October 2010, Bid TV celebrated its tenth birthday. As part of the celebrations and the expansion of the Sit-Up Shopping channels, a £5 million warehouse clearance event ran for six weeks from 16 August 2010, following the announcement that the company was relocating its Tamworth warehouse to a larger one. The studios of all three channels received new looks from 6 October 2010. On 3 October, host Peter Simon announced that the studio would be demolished within hours, and live broadcasts were temporarily filmed from the Speed Auction TV studio — dressed with yellow-and-black striped construction tape and brown dust sheets to fit the "under construction" theme — until the new studio was ready at 6 pm on 6 October, with new on-screen graphics to match.
Renamed to Bid
On 1 August 2011, Bid TV changed its name to Bid, dropping the "TV" from the name. New buying graphics were introduced across all Bid Shopping channels along with new idents featuring 3D products flying around the new logos. The redesign was intended to make buying easier for viewers. A multi-buy option was introduced on certain products, letting viewers buy more than one item at the same time, with postage and packaging still charged per item.
Shop at Bid and administration
On 10 March 2014, Bid rebranded once more, becoming Shop at Bid. The new format introduced fixed-price selling that ended the falling-price auction approach. A new premium-rate number was introduced costing 20 pence per minute, replacing the previous £1.53 per call. The buying process changed so that viewers could speak to an advisor after purchase, without needing a call-back.
The new format lasted just over a month. On 17 April 2014, Bid Shopping, the channel's owner, went into administration, and Shop at Bid and its sister channel Price Drop were closed down with immediate effect, costing 229 jobs. The websites were pulled offline and a technical-fault card appeared on the channels. On 23 April 2014, the Bid and Price Drop websites were updated and the channels were pulled from Virgin Media; they were removed from Freeview and Sky on 25 April 2014, with the electronic programme guide slots left blank. At the time of closure, Shop at Bid had been broadcasting on Freeview channel 23.
Criticisms and advertising controversies
For much of its life, Bid used a premium-rate phone charge of £1.53 per call for bidding, plus shipping and handling of at least £7.99 per item, meaning each purchase cost at least £9.52 more than the most prominently displayed price. The Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints against Bid on two separate occasions. In the most serious case, it ruled that Bid TV had overstated the guide price of £1,700 for "Black Agate Globes": Bid-Up could only produce proof of one supplier that may have sold the globe for £1,700, while one supplier it cited had actually offered it for £265, with most retailers pricing it between £250 and £500. Bid was found in breach of the broadcast advertising codes for inaccurate pricing.
In 2009, the channel attracted press and internet-forum attention when the host Paul Evers appeared on both Bid TV and Price-Drop TV at the same time, fronting two different auctions that were both apparently "live". Sit-Up's chief executive Ian Percival explained that the company was experimenting with recorded video played out with a live auction — "the price and the quantity are live, as shown on the graphics, but the video is pre-recorded". Recorded auctions were said to be scrapped after complaints and a possible ASA investigation, although in practice such "graphics-led" pre-recorded auctions had been a routine feature of the Sit-Up channels since launch; a mix-up in one such auction in 2002 had already led to a complaint being upheld by the Independent Television Commission.
On 21 May 2013, the Advertising Standards Authority referred Sit-Up Limited, the operator of Bid, to Ofcom for consideration of statutory sanctions after repeated breaches of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising. Ofcom accepted the referral. Since January 2012, thirty-three ASA cases had been ruled against Sit-Up Limited, with the two main problems being misleading pricing claims and misleading product descriptions.
Past presenters
The channel's presenters over the years included Nana Akua, Paul Becque, Marina Berry, Kevin Duala, Elisa Foreman, Adam Freeman, Nicola George, Keith Harris, the voiceover artist Chris Haywood, Justin Hazell, Andy Hodgson, Alex Lovell, Caroline Lyndsay, Paul Ross, Mike Mason, Mark Ryes, Greg Scott, Adele Sica, Peter Simon, Mike Smith and Claire Stuart. Many became familiar faces to the channel's loyal audience, and the relaxed on-air rapport between presenters and assistants was one of the channel's defining early characteristics.
Legacy
Bid TV was a pioneer: the first television auction shopping channel in Britain, it turned the act of bidding into mass entertainment and built a devoted following. Across its fourteen years — as Bid-Up.TV, Bid TV, Bid and finally Shop at Bid — it refined the falling-price auction format, experimented with multi-buy and phone-button product choices, and became a fixture of daytime Freeview. But the regulatory record of misleading pricing, the high hidden costs of premium-rate calls and postage, and ultimately the administration of its owner in April 2014 brought the experiment to an abrupt end. The blank EPG slots left behind on Freeview, Sky and Virgin Media marked the exit of a channel that had defined British teleshopping for a generation.
