(03-01-2011 21:15 )iloveMegan Wrote: What an absolutely bizarre state of affairs this is (although at this point nothing Babestation does should surprise me). When I flick through the babechannels, nearly always at least one will have a girl showing off her feet, which shows what a popular fetish it is (as do all the texts the girls used to get on Xtra, and still do during the day). For any channel to just suddenly announce they "aren't taking the requests any more" is ridiculous.
Hi iloveMegan. My observations tell me that 'niche interests' have been dying for a long time with Babestation. Party Girls on Channel 46 (my induction to BS) was a jigsaw of niche interest pockets. But that started to change quite quickly. When BS went to Channel 33 the restrictions were much tighter than they'd been on Channel 46, and I assumed for a long time that this was behind the lack of some of the stuff which had happened on PG.
However, I saw what I felt was real confirmation of 'niche interests' being 'airbrushed out' on commercial grounds, on 24th Aug '09 (BS1), when Yvette (of all people) got on the mic and advised any further domination callers to press option zero. She gave two reasons: 1) It was making her look moody, and 2) any listeners probably wouldn't want to hear it. Since then there seem to have been attempts to perpetuate certain 'niche interests', but to shepherd them into a specific area of the show(s) where it was as plainly obvious as poss what a caller would get. However, particularly through the course of 2010 BS seem to have increasingly aimed not to deviate from the 'mass market'. I remember early last year Tiffany going on the mic and making it very clear that no foot requests were welcome. Just weeks earlier on BS Xtra they'd been specifically courting foot fans with special text events.
On presumably quieter episodes of Party Girls I even seem to remember times when the girls would simply talk platonically with callers - if that's what the caller wanted. But once again, I'm sure for fear of losing eavesdroppers, this was stopped. By late 2009, not only was it obvious to callers that platonic chat was no longer tolerated, but the girls were making subtle assertions to that effect on the mic. On 14th Jan 2010 Jodie and Karina were on BS Xtra together. Karina said that if someone called her she would quickly try to turn the conversation sexual. She then said that if they replied: "No, I don't want to talk about that", she would respond: "Well, I'm sorry, but I'm going to anyway". On 30th March things went a step further with Daryl Morgan expressing that calls were not welcome from
groups of men or lads. The same risk to eavesdropping stats would lie behind all of these admonishments, but it was very interesting to hear such lines officially stated on the mic.
The reason I bring up the subject of platonic chat is that to many eavesdroppers, a dom call, foot call or whatever
is platonic chat. Whilst I respect anyone else's interest in feet, for example, I don't find them in any way sexual, so for me they're a non-sexual subject.
So I've no doubt at all that at certain times at least, girls on BS will be instructed not to accommodate even the most popular 'niche interests'. If the lines are very well loaded with eavesdroppers, the majority of whom will be assumed to want 'standard sex chat', the show just won't want to risk losing what could amount to a large sum of cash per minute.
I would say though that the Xmas/new year holiday may have had a bearing on things. Call traffic must have been incredibly high. Maybe mid week after everyone's gone back to work, you foot guys may be able to sneak some pleasure with a BS girl who isn't that busy in the dead of night. It does seem very unfair to people who've waited to talk to a girl when she can't do what they want, but it's a very imperfect system. As soon as you get more than one person on the line, there's a strong chance someone isn't gonna be entirely happy, and simply due to numbers, the perceived interests of the eavesdropper will always come first.