reaking Away from Linear Programming Flexibility and support from Salto through most of the 90s encouraged program- mers to break a way from linear programming. Live television was generated permanently at any available time slot. Thousands and thousands of extra hours were produced during the local and national elections in 1994 and 1998 as well as for local referenda. Live local television was there at all times, day and night so viewers, of all hours, became used to (their own) local programming. One of the most interesting developments about non linear, Programming is that "Prime Time" in Amsterdam slowly but steadily moved from the Conventional, nuclear family, time slot of 20.00 hours to 02.00 hours, the time when thousands of viewers get back home from bars and clubs and when confronted with a very limited Choice at that hour, tune into their “favourite” local station. CITIZEN TELEVISION An other important development of this period, is the appearance of a new television format: "Citizen Television" program- ming that was no longer realised by professionals, nor amateurs, but by concerned citizens with opinions, people wanting to play an active role in the developments of their community. This element brought along the demystification of the medi- um; in the same way that professional, telephone switch board (patch panel) operators were no longer needed for people to phone one an other with the introduction of automatic dialling in the 30s, professionals were no longer needed for tele- vision making. VIEWERS PARTICIPATION. Viewers direct participation became a standard feature of Amsterdam's live Programming. An all night program could eas- ily receive up to 300 phone calls and roughly the same amount of faxes. IRC and moderated news groups were also incor- porated to the cablecasting combining a wide variety of Conveying sources into a final mix.Point to point and multi-point- point video conferencing was regularly used to create links with other locations with in the city, nationally and interna- tionally. THE ESTABLISHMENT REACTION TO THE EVENTS National, public and private, networks (as well as the advertisement industry) were fast in noticing and catching up the de- velopments taking place with Amsterdam local television and the new, emerging audio visual vocabulary created in this no-budget situation. They were fast and efficient in re-adapting these developments to the requirements of their very com- petitive markets and advertisement people and net work executives were often seen monitoring Salto's live cablecastings behind the scenes. The so called “Late Night (cheap to produce and Profitable) Television Format" that includes viewers participation was first developed into its present form by the local programmers in Amsterdam and then commercialised by the national networks. There are many that say that it is partly because of the developments in local, tactical television in Amsterdam, that many networks decided to have studios in the Dutch capital, and in some cases to fully operate from there, instead of Hilversum the city where the Dutch national networks are concentrated, in order to be close to the radically innovative programming generated at that period. After all, a century earlier, it was the initiatives of pioneer radio amateurs that developed radio as the first electronic mass medium THE END OF THE 90S Right after the 1998 local elections, programmers in Salto were confronted with radical changes imposed by the new man- agement. “The Nest" (a conference room) the place used for live cablecasting was no longer available (so that technicians could have more space) a discussion taken without any prior consultation with the many programmers that cablecasted live from there, and insensitively disregarding the history written from this particular room. Cablecasting from any other lo- cation in the city makes a live program much more expensive. The only alternative available was a “semi-professional” studio (semi-professional = semi-pregnant one is or one is no. There are no in between) that was of no interest to those in- volved in “Citizen Television" and lot more expensive. ec)