CITV
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- This article is about ITV's children's television brand. For other uses, see CITV (disambiguation).
CITV (short for Children's ITV) is the brand name used for the majority of children's television output on the British Channel 3 television stations, including ITV1, breakfast broadcaster GMTV and the ITV plc-owned CITV Channel as well as non ITV plc owned regions. The flagship CITV strand is currently broadcast on weekday afternoons across all ITV regional stations (normally referred to as ITV1) between 15:30 and 17:00, and also on Saturday mornings between 06:00 and 11:30 and on Sunday mornings between 07:25 and 10.00 (all referred to as CITV on ITV1), however recent rumours have been circulating that the afternoon weekday slot is to be scrapped altogether and therefore have it only run on weekend mornings on ITV1. It also has its own channel on Freeview channel 75, NTL:Telewest channel 734, Homechoice and Sky Digital channel 624. Children's ITV began on 3rd January 1983.
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[edit] News
CITV launched a set of new Christmas idents today for CITV on ITV1 & the CITV Channel. The idents features three cartoon animals including a Snowman, a Turkey & a Reindeer. Along with the start of their 14 days countdown to Christmas.
[edit] History
[edit] The Past
Produced by Central Independent Television, Children's ITV first went on air in January 1983, and consisted of programmes with recorded links in between, initially featuring a different presenter each month. Recorded links continued until 1987, when it started to be broadcast live, echoing Children's BBC which had started two years earlier. Before being known as Children's ITV the timeslot was briefly branded as Watch IT!
In 1989, a company called Stonewall Productions won the contract to produce Children's ITV, and it did so until April 1991, when Central won it back.
In February 1993, in-vision presentation was dropped, with Steven Ryde providing the voice-overs for out-of-vision links featuring a wide variety of animated characters. A few months later the Children's ITV name was changed to the more youth-friendly Citv, having been used in some form or another since the previous year (the arrangement of upper- and lower-case letters matches that of the logo used at the time). However, the "Children's" wasn't removed from the logo until September 1996, the same month a Digital On-screen Graphic (DOG) was introduced.
This continued until May 1998, when a new in-vision service was introduced, fronted by presenters Stephen Mulhern and Danielle Nicholls. A new logo was introduced, and henceforth the service had been referred to as CiTV (until another new logo was introduced in March 2006 and the service became simply known as CITV). The studio space available was initially very small, but in September 1999, CITV started sharing studio space with Central News, allowing room for a large stylised set created by a company called Dorans Propmakers.
The service remained fundamentally the same, with occasional changes to the set and presenter lineup, until September 2004, when an out-of-vision service was re-introduced, most likely due to budget cuts laid down by ITV management.
[edit] The Present
CITV is broadcast weekdays between 3.30pm and 5.00pm. The long running Saturday morning slot from 9.25am, until recently filled by the show Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown, was axed from its ITV1 slot and was replaced by Saturday Cooks! on June 10, 2006. Saturday Cooks has now disappeard from the Saturday morning slot and CITV is now back on ITV1 on Saturday mornings at 9.25am showing repeats of classic CITV cartoon such as Spongebob Squarepants, and children's shows continue to be broadcast before that time on the Saturday morning (GMTV), and of course, it has its own Channel. As of the new channel's launch, Channel 3 breakfast broadcaster GMTV now also uses the CITV brand across its children's output between 6am and 9.25 on GMTV1, GMTV2 and the CITV Channel. The ITV1 weekday afternoon service from CITV was also updated to reflect the new look as of March 13.
CITV on ITV1 is now in a timeslot of 3.30pm - 5.00pm.
CITV recently won children's BAFTA's for pre school animation for Pocoyo, in animation for Amazing Adrenalini Brothers, drama The Giblet Boys and presenter Holly Willoughby for Saturday Showdown.
The CITV Channel runs everyday from 6am to 6pm and has a mix genre and age range of programming for both Pre School age and older children. The channel is a unique collerboration between ITV and GMTV.
[edit] The Future
A recent Media Guardian article suggests that the future of CITV on ITV1 is no longer in doubt.
Another Media Guardian article says that Granada Kids is closing, and ITV won't be making its own children's programming any more.[1]
ITV recently discussed with Ofcom the possibility about massively reducing its children's programming on ITV1, with one of the options being to cut kids output from eight hours a week to just two. A formal request was made to the watchdog but was rejected, Ofcom stating that ITV had an obligation to continue to broadcast children's' TV on their main, terrestrial channel. [2]
[edit] Saturday Morning
Over the years CITV's flagship show has aired on Saturday mornings, The last show to do this was Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown which is an updated version of Ministry of Mayhem. As of Saturday 10 June 2006 the show was exclusive to the CITV Channel before ending on Saturday 1st July 2006. This continued the recession of Children's output on the ITV terrestrial service. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup, practically no children's programming aired on ITV (except GMTV Strands and Sunday morning) and all other children's programming aired on the CITV channel.
In addition to this, the last of the Saturday Morning "Magazine" shows, Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown, was replaced by Saturday Cooks in an attempt to compete with the BBC's own Saturday Kitchen (However, in the case of BBC, its own Saturday morning programmes now run on BBC Two). The CITV Channel at the moment has a cartoon slot from 9.25am to 12noon every Saturday morning called Toonbase.
CITV has currently a Saturday morning slot from 09:25 to 11:30am on ITV1 including Spongebob Squarepants, Horrid Henry (starting next Saturday), Shuriken School, Skyland, Drake & Josh and Amazing Adrenalini Brothers.
The most popular show of recent times was SMTV Live, which launched the presenting careers of Ant & Dec and Cat Deeley.
For the full list see: List of CITV programmes.
[edit] GMTV
Since 11 March 2006, the breakfast-time broadcasting company GMTV, which is partially owned by ITV plc and shares its frequencies, has also adopted CITV branding, although its children's programming remains technically distinct from that produced by ITV plc in that it is bought and controlled separately by the breakfast station, so is not 'True CITV'. The use of the CITV logo and graphics (a move previously avoided by GMTV) was adopted in order to simplify the simulcast of GMTV's programmes on the CITV Channel, which is a joint timeshare venture between the two broadcasters. Where kids' output is not simulcast, GMTV tends to retain its own GMTV Kids branding, especially in the case of its Preschool programming.
[edit] Presenters
Presenters on CITV over the years have included:
- Matthew Kelly (January 1983)
- Isla St Clair (February 1983)
- Derek Griffiths (one month[?] in 1983)
- Tommy Boyd (first time; one month[?] in 1983)
- Stu Francis (Mid 1980s[?])
- Tommy Boyd (second time; mid 1980s[?])
- James Baker (mid 1980s[?])
- Gary Terzza (1987 - 1988)
- Debbie Shore (1987 - 1988)
- Mark Granger (1988 - 1989)
- Andi Peters (Summer 1988)
- Jeanne Downs (1989 - April 1991)
- Jerry Foulkes (1989 - April 1991)
- Clive Warren (1989 - April 1991)
- "Scally" (dog puppet; 1989 - April 1991)
- Tommy Boyd (third time; April 1991 - February 1993)
- Glenn Kinsey (mornings and Decembers only; Summer 1991 - December 1992)
- Steven Ryde (voice only; February 1993 - May 1998)
- Stephen Mulhern (May 1998 - August 2002)
- Danielle Nicholls (May 1998 - December 2001)
- Tom Darville (January 2000 - December 2001)
- Andrea Green (January 2000 - October 2000)
- David Leon (September 2001 - December 2002)
- Leigh Morrison (September 2001 - December 2002)
- Leah Charles (September 2001 - December 2003)
- Michael Underwood (August 2002 - December 2003)
- Tim Dixon (January 2003 - December 2003)
- Gail McKenna (January 2003 - October 2003, February 2004 - March 2004)
- Andy Jaye (January 2004 - September 2004)
- Laura Jaye (January 2004 - September 2004)
- Tim Dann (voice only; September 2004 - [CITV on ITV1 only])
- Unknown (voice only; May 2006 - [CITV Channel only])
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- CITV at itv.com
- Popcorn at itv.com
- Watched It - a site containing a wealth of information about past programmes and presenters on both CITV and its rival, CBBC
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