History Series / KYTV

* '''The Continuity Announcer''' (Phillip Pope), who has the thankless job of announcing upcoming programs, and who tends to either get cut off mid-sentence or appear on-screen mid-sentence, making for some rather interesting NoodleIncident implications. Appeared in ''KYTV'' only.

* '''Mike Channel''' (Angus Deayton), the old veteran whose career is dwindling and keeps losing time slots and host jobs to younger presenters. He's also the go-to "reporter on the scene," particularly in KYTV, and tends to get stuck interviewing all the weirdoes and oddballs. Usually plays StraightMan to the others, but with a heavy accent on the DeadpanSnarker.

* '''Sir Norman Tonsil''' (Angus Deayton), the owner of ''Radio Active,'' a tyrant, slave driver and all-around JerkAss. In KYTV, he was renamed "Sir Kenneth Yellowhammer." (S.K.Y, geddit?)

** Angus Deayton -> Creator/JohnCleese (the tall, [[DeadpanSnarker sarcastic]] one)

** Angus Deayton -> John Cleese (the tall, [[DeadpanSnarker sarcastic]] one)

** Helen Atkinson-Wood/Morwenna Banks (Banks stood in for her in some episodes) -> Jo Kendall ([[TheSmurfettePrinciple the female one]] with [[ManOfAThousandVoices a knack for voices]])

* FunWithAcronyms: KYTV's Daily Adult Nude Channel. Originally planned to be the [[ADateWithRosiePalms Weekly Adult Nude Channel]].
%% * GettingCrapPastThe Radar: Due to overwhelming and persistent misuse, GCPTR is on-page examples only until 01 June 2021. If you are reading this in the future, please check the trope page to make sure your example fits the current definition.

** Helen Atkinson-Wood/Morwenna Banks (Banks stood in for her in some episodes) -> Jo Kendall ([[TheChick the female one]] with [[ManOfAThousandVoices a knack for voices]])

* SlapstickKnowsNoGender: While the male characters do, on the whole, take more abuse, the female characters are by no means safe from it.

* TwoChicksInAKitchen: One of the recurring {{Parody Commercial}}s would feature Mary and June, two women who kept informing each other about various strange consumer products. The final one of these took the premise to its logical conclusion, when June revealed that she was completely broke because she'd spent all her money on "thirty years of useless consumer products."

* ContemptibleCover: In-universe, the cover of Honest Ron's new translation of Literature/TheBible. In real-life, the cover of the ''Radio Active Times'' tie-in book, which has a topless woman on it.

** The ''Radio Active'' tie-in book had one [[ContemptibleCover on the front cover]].

* EarlyInstallmentWeirdness: The first season of ''Radio Active'' is very different in tone, and the presenters are generic and interchangeable without the personalities and quirks that would come to define them in later seasons (Mike Channel and Mike Flex are civil to one another, Nigel Pry is coherent, Mike Stand does not giggle and make {{Accidental Innuendo}}es).

* GettingCrapPastTheRadar: It took several seasons before the censors realized the implications of having a character named "Mike Hunt".

* BookEnds: "Those Wonderful War Years" begins with the Continuity Announcer beginning (as always) in mid-sentence: "...with his trousers round his ankles." In the show's [[TheStinger post-credits sequence]], he announces "And now, ''A Look Askance'', with Johnathan Strumpkins." This cuts to Strumpkins (Fenton Stevens) entering through a door, carrying a huge pile of film cans... with his trousers round his ankles. Which causes him to trip, drop the cans, and exit in embarrassment.

* [[OneSteveLimit One Mike Limit]]: Averted in fine style, with Mike Channel, Mike Flex, Mike Hunt and Mike Stand all regulars. Subtly lampshaded when Martin Brown joins the station and Mike Hunt initially addresses him as Mike too. Because ''of course'' any male presenter is going to be called Mike.

* CharacterExaggeration: As a very good example of TropesAreNotBad. In the first season of ''Radio Active'', the staff were largely interchangeable and had few individual traits apart from their {{Punny Name}}s. From the second season on, they got more caricatured and subsequently much more interesting and entertaining.

* DarkerAndEdgier: "Fly on the Walls" in ''KYTV'' -- a very dark BlackComedy with a DownerEnding.
* TheDeterminator: Martin Brown may not be able to do anything right, but he never gives up and never loses his childlike enthusiasm. And he could occasionally come out on top - in the episode "Backchat," he comes close to be fired - when he tells Sir Norman Tonsil that he has a recording of Sir Norman at the Christmas party which the listeners might to hear... and Sir Norman immediately decides to reinstate Martin his choice of any show to present.

* ContemptibleCover: In-universe, the cover of Honest Ron's new translation of TheBible. In real-life, the cover of the ''Radio Active Times'' tie-in book, which has a topless woman on it.

* LeFilmArtistique: One ''KYTV'' trailer is for a film of this type, entitled "Un Homme et du Sel".

* EraSpecificPersonality: Some of the central characters were altered a bit in the transition from ''Radio Active'' to ''KYTV'', mostly because of how the actors didn't always look the part they'd been playing. Mike Channel, for one, is repeatedly mentioned as old and over the hill in ''Radio Active'', but in ''KYTV'' he's roughly the same age as the rest of the cast, and, while still the DeadpanSnarker ButtMonkey of the show, has lost his self-pitying pathos. Likewise, the radio version of Anna Daptor is hinted to be a fat slob, but the on-screen version is quite slim and pretty. In "The Fit and Fat Show", part of the humour comes from the overweight glutton Anna being the last person you'd want to take weight-loss advice from - a joke which falls flat in the tie-in book where it's illustrated with photos of the not-even-remotely-podgy Helen Atkinson-Wood.

* AbsenteeActor:
** Mike Channel is uncharacteristically absent from the 1987 episode "God Alone Knows," probably because the host of Radio Active's religious show - the Right Reverend Reverend Wright - is also played by Angus Deayton.
** Similarly in the ''KYTV'' episode "Speak for Yourself", Mike Channel is absent (except in a reused clip) because Angus Deayton is playing Sir Kenneth Yellowhammer throughout.
** Helen Atkinson-Wood doesn't take part in a few episodes, with her place taken by Morwenna Banks.
* ActorExistenceLimbo: As Geoffrey Perkins died in 2008, the character of Mike Flex was absent from the 2016 stage revival. In the radio broadcast of said revival, one of his old skits was used as TheStinger.