The Children's Channel

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The Children's Channel (TCC)
The Children's Channel
Launched 1 September 1984
Closed 3 April 1998
Owned by Flextech
Website tcc.co.uk (closed)

The Children's Channel was an early cable channel which began broadcasting on September 1, 1984 in the United Kingdom. It also became available on the Astra Satellite in 1989. From 1992, a later segment of the channel between 5-7 PM was renamed & rebranded as TCC which aimed its focus to teenagers. (This segment was not at first available on some cable networks which continued to take a feed from Eutelsat that continued to end at 5 pm.) The segment, which later began transmitting half an hour earlier at 4.30, featured a number of home-produced programmes, such as CDQ (Compact Disc Quiz) and TVFM. During the day, however the channel continued its focus on younger children, by and large remaining the same, and a large amount of its programming output was still archive animated shows from the 1980s, many of which were also shown on Sky One. The focus on teenage-oriented programming became more prominent and eventually the channel was known as 'TCC' all day. In 1997, the programmes for older children were split off into a separate TV station called Trouble, although now timesharing with Bravo. At this point, TCC reverted to the original name of The Children's Channel (then later renaming back to TCC yet again) and continued screening programmes for younger children, running side by side with Trouble for nearly a year, before eventually closing down on April 3, 1998.

UK cable operator Cable & Wireless continued to carry the TCC channel even after it closed down - this was achieved by carrying the TCC Nordic feed, a commercial-free version of TCC aimed at Scandinavia. This carriage, and TCC Nordic itself, ended a few months later.

After the TCC / Trouble break away after 5PM TCC then timeshared with the new network The Family Channel, which outlived TCC and eventually transformed into the game show channel Challenge.

The channel's website (tcc.co.uk) was still available as late as Autumn 2005, though significantly cut down from when the channel still broadcast, but now redirects to an order page for Sky Digital.

In its day The Children's Channel created some of its own original programming. Connect 4 and The Super Mario Challenge were popular tea-time quiz shows. Some other 'in-between' show segments included Link Anchor Man an animated spoof of an American newsreader who would read out viewers letters and give a response. Another completely computer generated segment was Fact Or Fib were a story was read out and you would be given 30 seconds to decide whether what you had just been told was Fact or Fib before the answer was revealed. The station had two programme strands on weekdays from 1992 to 1995, one of which was "Ratkan" (in 1992-3; followed by Ratkan II in 1993-4 and Ratkan 3 in 1994-5), shown from 06:00-09:00, before school, and from 15:15-17:00, after school. The morning programme was repeated from 11:00 to 14:00. A strand for pre-schoolers, "It's Droibee Time", aired 09:00-11:00. Both strands were based on a spaceship called the Ratkan, and were staffed by a human presenter with "droids", puppets designed to look like androids. During school holidays, Ratkan aired 07:00-12:00, with It's Droibee Time off air. A live action quiz programme, "Around the World in 80 Seconds", was produced for the channel in 1993-4. Hosted by Timmy Mallett as Captain Everything, schoolchildren participated in a quiz based on geography and general knowledge of particular countries, before "replaying" famous scenarios from history of their chosen country. The top team received a prize of a four-day trip to the then-new Disneyland Resort Paris.

It is largely cited in UK animation circles that Jetix UK (formerly Fox Kids UK) is the spiritual successor of TCC in spite there being no relation (In terms of companies or shows aired on either channels) between the two. TCC commissioned the first series of Dennis the Menace (from The Beano comic). This was a puppet show using green screen. This version of Dennis The Menace should not be confused with the BBC commissioned cartoon series produced by HIT. This was later shown on Fox Kids, and is now on the CBBC Channel.

[edit] Programmes

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