Yep, that’s it!
What a story eh 
Still see “Jezza” appear online from time to time.
I joined MS start of 2012 (9th year now wow time goes quick), after dipping in and our as an observer for a few years prior, to be a “news writer” after email and phone conversations with the then MS news editor (for those who don’t remember there used to be great news articles like TVT or a major masthead).
However, shortly after joining the MS news sadly winded-down and a string of staff up and left. Remember the old oage with all the staff positions “chief admin, etc” all the way down to news writers, vault contributes (I miss the old MS vault, was a treasure trove) and tech staff.
So so much has changed in actually not that long!
I wasn’t even interested in ratings (didn’t even know much about how it worked) in my first few years, developed an obsession with Ten News and a lot of tech forums. Some might recall.
Thanks to the remaining staff from the time for putting up with me too, I’ve changed on here, but am seriously the nicest fella in real life. @OnAir that offer is still open for that catch-up at a Boxing Day Test… One say 
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One of these years, we’ll make it happen! (Once social distancing ends)
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It is perhaps worth noting that, between the fourth (maroon) and fifth (orange) images, there were the following logo/header variants, each by a different designer.
(1) This one was obviously a tweaked version of the previous logo and motifs, but gave more prominence to the “signal” mark. It was part of a new dark green and orange/gold site design, which was introduced in mid-2009 and lasted about a year.
(2) The following one (introduced not long after the Great Forum Explosion of 2010) marked the change to the Avenir typeface and an orange colour scheme, both of which lasted a long time (indeed, the exact logo looks to have been reused when this forum moved to Discourse).
The news section had a blue look:
The forum design that accompanied the logo change was so-so: IPB was difficult to skin, the default wasn’t great, and the designer was still getting the hang of things (or I’m sure that is what they would say if they were here to defend themselves). Later refreshes were perhaps more successful.
The “blue and red capsule look” mentioned above is presumably this one, which is from 2005 (some time between the second and third images in the post to which I am replying):
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Oh gosh this one brings back memories. It’s the era when I first joined the forums. 
I was a moody teenager that couldn’t handle debate or criticism. Thank goodness those days are long gone.
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That logo still looks modern to this day!
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IPB was a royal pain in the ass to skin. Every version upgrade would break your existing layout and require most of the work to be redone (which was extremely time consuming). I loved the operational aspects of IPB but getting it to look good was painful.
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Alas, they were shown the door, and forced to become @ElCapitanCranky’s head writer as punishment for their failure.
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Hey! I resemble those remarks. 
Also, I wrote brilliantly for TSR! Where’s my roll of honour doo-hickey? 
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I was one of the site administrators at the very beginning of Media Spy when a default board skin was used with some minor modifications such as the logo and some text. Finding the files needed to even make those changes were painful. I’ve been around on the furums on and off ever since.
Discourse the platform Media Spy currently uses is good but some configuration changes require a full restart of the underlying containers which can be painful. The site works really well on a mobile which is what I like.
I’m not sure how easy it is to skin I am no webdesigner I just look after infrastructure.
Looking at the news reader lists from back in 2004 and old graphics was good to see. A better easier time than now.
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You did!
During my very short career as a TSR writer I did reviews of the food from the first two episodes of Recipe to Riches. A very minor blimp that went nowhere.
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Does anyone have a current date when media spy first launched? I can remember roughly back from 2003.
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I remember as far back as 2005 … maybe 2004.
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I was on it in year 8 and that was 2001 haha… but it was called Media Central then.
Jesus I have been on this website for 20 years.
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Crickey my kids are your age lol
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Never knew that!
How did it get changed to Media Spy?
(I’ve been around since 2004, so I’m not far behind!).
I cold be wrong, it could have been a different site than closed and then this was born but I am pretty sure it grew from one to the other.
Used to just have alot of screen grabs of female presenters on it haha.
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It was the same site not sure why the name changed.
I always assumed Digital Spy inspired the name Media Spy.
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