The inauguration of a new conventional television channel, loaded with series from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, seems paradoxical in 2026, but VinTV — Vintage Television is not a remix of RTP Memória nor a redundancy of streaming. Broadcasts begin this Monday with series that are not, legally, anywhere: Who Leaves His Own, ALF – A Thing from Another WorldThe Punisher, Crime, She Said and, even ready to dialogue with The Pitt on HBO Max, Emergency Service. And there will be Beverly Hills 90210 and films like Footloose or Flashdance.
Marta Barros is the channel’s director and her journey to VinTV explains it all: “I’m the channel’s programming director Panda Biggswhich will disappear to make way for the VinTV channel. The Biggs it was a channel tweens and young adultsthat is, it was for a target which is currently no longer on the threshold (of ages after launch in 2009, for the range between 15 and 24 years old) and the audiences were very weak”. At the end of 2025, Dreamia, the company that brings together Nos and the Iberian and Latin American AMC, decided on a new direction and this is already targeting the audience aged 45 and over, but also for generation Z and the millennials more curious or nostalgic.
“There is a great demand for nostalgic series”, which, being special and airing, some, from time to time, on the RTP Memória schedule, “are not on the platforms”. The idea of this channel, which is exclusively about series and films, is to capitalize on this desire to make rewind and apply “specialized curation of nostalgic content”, says Marta Barros to PÚBLICO. The teenagers of the past, the twenty-somethings and the thirty-somethings of the present can join Generation X from the time of two and then four channels and, if they can wait for the right time, have lunch with Jessica Fletcher and Crime, She Said (Mondays at 12:15 p.m.), have dessert with Michael J. Fox, or rather the prodigal son of the Keaton family in Who Leaves His Own (2:30 p.m.) and say goodbye to the break with ALF (2:55 p.m.).
At 7:15 pm, who’s watching? The Pitt on HBO Max and hear about his family tree, rooted in Emergency Servicecan take revenge on the fact that, in 2025, the 1990s series set at Chicago General Hospital has since been removed from the catalog of the same platform. The 331 episodes of the series are VinTV’s late afternoon, which will have a vertical grid with a prime time slot for, from Monday to Friday, the same series at the same 9:30 pm. Like in the past. The Punisheror Knight Rider and Michael Knight and the talking car KITTthe second, then ALF, Emergency Service, Who Comes to Your Own and a movie on Friday — the first ones will be Flashdance (day 8) and Footloose (day 15).
The television monoculture of the 1980s was a terrain like no other to create habits so shared that they were like wallpaper in each person’s home, generic songs that remained forever stuck in one’s head, conversations that left no one out.
The channel’s strategy to explore this aspect of television vintage “it was to look for what was available for sale”, simplifies Marta Barros, “and what would not be available” in the streaming and non-linear. And if ALF will be in its original version, with the grain and format of the 1980s, Beverly Hills 90210or Fever in Beverly Hillswill be shown in a remastered version, with Brandon, Brenda, Kelly or Steve in HD.
In September, other series will come, such as The Prince of Bel-Airand the channel plans to show Portuguese titles such as Fresh Pasta, Herman Encyclopedia or Duarte and C.ª. Every year and a half or two years there will be a rotation of VinTV titles depending on the rights to show the series and also the market reaction. “We are going to launch many series that we are currently not seeing and I believe that they will start to appear later (on other media)” because the competition, he believes, “will realize that there is a trend and there is a taste for series that date back to these times”.
