What happened to CITV?

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Knight-Rich
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What happened to CITV?

Post by Knight-Rich »

I rember coming home from school and flicking between CBBC and CITV. I looked through both channels recently at around the 'Kids coming home from school' hour and found no mention of CITV. Just did some research and it seems no more kids shows are shown of channel 3 around this time. Why is this?

I have some great memories of the kids TV shows shown when I was growing up and i'm sure all people my age will think the same.
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Brainiac
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Re:What happened to CITV?

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Taken from Wiki:
Children's ITV began in January 1983 and originally featured pre-recorded in-vision continuity links fronted by various presenters and characters from Children's ITV programmes. The strand was broadcast live from Central Independent Television for the first time in 1987 and started to utilise regular staff presenters. The rebranded CITV reverted to out-of-vision continuity in February 1993, voiced by Steven Ryde, who later became a producer when the strand reverted back to in-vision presentation in May 1998 and hired new presenters. In-vision continuity was phased out again in September 2004, signalling the end of CITV presentation from Birmingham after 17 years. At the start of 2007, CITV was no longer seen on weekday afternoons on ITV1. Since January 2009 CITV is no longer seen at all on ITV1. Currently, CITV presentation is produced by Granada Television in Manchester, with pre-recorded continuity links voiced by James Cook, Paul Merchant & Dermot O'Leary.
Post 2000 however, the overall quality of CITV's output began to drop considerably after peaking in the early 1990s, apparent budget cuts meant fewer shows were made, repeats were much more frequent, and many flagship shows were axed. It did not help that in 2001 CITV's controller Janie Grace publicly criticised Carlton and Granada, then ITV's controlling forces, for underinvestment in ITV's children's service. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grace was removed from her post just as Nigel Pickard was named as ITV's new Director of Programmes. This decline has seemingly continued, thanks to perceived rising costs of original production (and the effects on advertising revenues following the ban by OFCOM on 'junk food' advertising within children's schedules), and increasing competition from CBBC and countless digital children's channels for new programmes (especially imported cartoons, typically from America).
It's a very sad state of affairs.
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NeilJones
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Re:What happened to CITV?

Post by NeilJones »

Knight-Rich wrote: I rember coming home from school and flicking between CBBC and CITV. I looked through both channels recently at around the 'Kids coming home from school' hour and found no mention of CITV. Just did some research and it seems no more kids shows are shown of channel 3 around this time. Why is this?
It makes them no money. In fact ITV wants to drop everything that goes along with ITV - no CITV, no regional commitments, no paying a fortune to the treasury for the spectrum, no public service broadcasting...

CBBC on BBC One may be a thing of the past as well at some point. CITV on ITV was a matter of time before it was dropped as the budget fell away. Strange as it may seem, Alan Titchmarsh gets better ratings.

And anyway CITV on ITV1 still continues - for about two weeks around Christmas time. Set the alarm for 5am. Or alternatively the CITV channel.
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Gizensha
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Re:What happened to CITV?

Post by Gizensha »

Brainiac wrote:
Post 2000 however, the overall quality of CITV's output began to drop considerably
Somewhat biased, I think, especially for a wiki article. The 00s CITV output did see some very good gameshows...

What happened to ITV? Well, the decision to not make cITV shows for teens dented the variety of the output, and OFCOM's decision to ban junk food ads pretty much killed cITV's funding (Which, apparently and bafflingly surprised OFCOM despite being pretty obvious to everyone else). the CITV channel therefore broadcasts pretty much just repeats... Meanwhile CBBC has new programming and... Uhh... Pretty much ignores the 12-16 year olds and has done since CITV stopping counting them (but that is picking up, in response to the same OFCOM report that prompted to Channel 4 started looking into doing 12-16 year old aimed shows. As far as I'm aware the BBC have now one show aimed at that range, while channel four have none yet)
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