The story
Early history
Sit-Up was founded in 2000, with their first television network - Bid-Up.TV launching in October of that year.
In March 2001, it was announced that Telewest Communications would sell their Screenshop teleshopping service to Sit Up for £10 million, of which it would merge into Bid Up.TV's operations while Telewest would take a 38% stake valued at a £14.8m cash injection into Sit Up.
On 29 August 2002, a second Screenshop channel was launched on Sky Digital.
In March 2003, Sit Up announced that they would launch their second shopping network - Price Drop.TV.
In July 2004, Sit Up signed a four-year deal with Vector Direct to allow Vector to exclusively supply Screenshop's teleshopping programming, as well as during the downtime on Bid Up and Price Drop. The deal was valued at £5 million.
Sale to Telewest and Expansion
In January 2005, Bid Up.TV and Price Drop.TV were rebranded as Bid TV and Price Drop TV. In the same month, it was announced that they would launch two free-to-air movie channels called Real-movies.tv and Movies on 333. Real-movies.tv was to be female-orientated with an emphasis on true stories, whilst Movies on 333 (intended for Sky Digital channel 333) would focus on western and niche films. However, another company would launch their own free-to-air movie channel just ahead of Sit-Up's in the 333 slot; True Movies was also female orientated with an emphasis on true stories. Sit-Up changed their original channel proposals, with Matinee Movies and Bad Movies emerging as their new channels (details below), which both launched on 25 April. On 16 May, Telewest announced that they would fully purchase Sit-Up for £194 million. In December 2005, American licensing company 4Kids Entertainment had talks with Sit-Up to secure a 5-year lease to air a three-hour strand of children's programmes on either Bid TV or Price Drop TV in the mornings. The deal never materialised upon the initial announcement.
In January 2009, Virgin Media announced the sale of Sit-Up to Aurelius AG for an undisclosed amount. The deal was closed on 1 April.
Rebranding and Collapse
In September 2010, Sit Up launched dibbing.com, an online-exclusive auction site.
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On 1 August 2011, Sit-Up announced that it would rename itself as Bid Shopping, with its main portfolio of brands rebranding as Bid, Price Drop and Speed Auction. The dibbing.com website was rebranded as pricedropper.co.uk.
Since January 2012, there have been 33 ASA rulings against Sit-Up Ltd. The two main types of problem have been misleading pricing claims and misleading product descriptions. On 21 May 2013, it was announced that the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had referred Sit-Up Limited to Ofcom for consideration of statutory sanctions following repeated breaches of the UK Code of Broadcast Advertising. Ofcom has confirmed that it has accepted the referral.
In December 2013, the struggling Bid Shopping group was taken over by former Corporate Restructuring Lawyer Bryan Green; the channel posted pre-tax losses of £7.4m in 2011 and a 10% fall in sales. In February 2014, it was revealed Bid Shopping had debts of £68m and was looking to enter a voluntary agreement with its creditors to keep the company going.
On 10 March 2014, Bid was rebranded as 'Shop at Bid' and took on a more traditional shopping channel look with the premium rate number replaced with a number costing 20p per minute, it also appears the channel is no longer having auctions and has gone for a traditional sell and buy format. On 17 April 2014, Bid Shopping was put into administration; Shop at Bid and its sister channel Price Drop were closed down with immediate effect with around 200 jobs being lost.
Failed relaunch
On 18 February 2015, Grant Miller, through the company Bid Shopping Limited, acquired the intellectual property, patents, brands, and domains of Sit-Up, which resulted in Sit-Up emerging from administration. Shortly afterward, the company relaunched the Screenshop and Bid TV website with the intention of both brands returning online and through television screens in 2016. However, nothing came forward with these plans, and the sites soon went offline.
The Screenshop website returned in 2024 with new plans to relaunch the brand as an online service. However, like the attempted relaunch from 2015, nothing has come forward with these plans.
From Wikipedia’s article on Bid Shopping, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3