Commencing operations in on 31 December 1983, primarily it transmitted imported programmes in an unedited form, allowing all comical references to race issues to be aired. While initially intended for the Bophuthatswana homeland, it was later relayed from the Johannesburg TV transmitter toward Soweto, on the UHF band The first programme seen was reportedly a
Woody Woodpecker cartoon. The station was founded by an American, who worked with a British deputy, Robin Welch, from Bristol. In the
apartheid era, a small number of
white people who were able to receive unintentional overspill watched Bop TV, which offered alternative entertainment and current affairs programming to the state-controlled
South African Broadcasting Corporation, even though the signal was transmitted in a tight beam from the main Johannesburg TV transmitter toward
Soweto. It was strongly recommended that the signals were to be limited to areas with a high Tswana population. Unlike the three SABC channels available at the time (TV1, TV2, and in the case of eastern South Africa TV3), which broadcast on the VHF band with horizontal polarity in Johannesburg (channels 6, 9, and 13), Bop TV broadcast over the UHF band with vertical polarity in Johannesburg (channel 37). Furthermore, both Bop TV and the SABC had set up an agreement whereby each side would not broadcast opinions contrary to the other. While the SABC had no jurisdiction over the independent homeland of Bophuthathswana, if Bop TV violated those agreements, the SABC would shut off the Johannesburg relay. Within three months of its founding, Bop TV rapidly overtook the SABC channels in terms of ratings. The channel was set up by Tim Ellis, who also assisted in the creation of the SABC's TV4 in 1984 (which went live after the 9pm closing time for both TV2 and TV3) and later
M-Net. Beginning in 1985, it started carrying the Edutel pilot project, which became a full service in 1986; in 1991, Edutel moved to
Mmabatho Television, while its airtime on Bop TV was replaced by its Music TV service. Bop TV started satellite broadcasts in 1988, using a satellite from the Intelsat IV fleet for that purpose. The channel was even carried in the early years of cable television in
Israel and was the primary way Israel saw
CNN International during the
Gulf War, being removed over concerns due to its American imports, program contracts and the refusal of the Israeli cable companies to pay for its reception. By 1990, Bop TV was received by some 350,000 television sets in its coverage area, for a daily schedule of nine hours. The channel was already interested in buying new series such as
The Simpsons (before it even premiered on
M-Net) and
The Arsenio Hall Show, but the prices for such were expensive. Its executives were in screening sessions from numerous production companies, including American juggernauts. This infuriated the bosses of Bop Broadcasting. In 1997, the State Reorganisation Act led to the creation of subsidies for the former bantustan broadcasters that were now under the SABC's control. The said subsidy ended in November 2001. From then onward, the SABC was now funding Bop Broadcasting in its entirety. The channel started airing the Setswana SABC news bulletin at 9pm on 4 January 2000, coinciding with changes to SABC2's primetime schedule. In 2003, the SABC announced that they would shut the channel down on 31 July. After its closure, the SABC planned to use its infrastructure for a regional broadcasting base. ==List of programmes==