[Neil Jones]

From the schedules it looks like a normal day. For many it’s the first day back to work and school, something that the last two big anniversaries didn’t have - 2003 was a Bank Holiday Monday and 2013 was during a weekend.

CITV always feels like it’s not loved by ITV, look at how it wasn’t included in the recent rebranding (though some have said it may happen in the New Year). Long gone are the days of in vision presenters and even out of vision continuity, now even most trailers say that a programme is “on CITV” with no details of time, etc.

Thankfully the government support has meant that some original programmes are getting made for the channel, but it’s inferior to what it used to be.

Well there is more competition around these days and lets be fair the requirements for the service on the main channel have dwindled to seven hours a week (weekend mornings), with occasional bursts of "extra" dotted throughout the year, mainly at Christmas. They used to knock out about 500 minutes of output a week back in the 1980s/1990s/early 2000s, just on the weekday afternoons alone, typically 3:30-5:10 which varied a bit over the years, then if you add in all the Saturday morning programmes and what they used to do on Sundays (Disney Club and what not), that's probably another 5hrs or so a week (less commercials of course!)

But of course they had a relatively captive audience and it was worth spending the money. These days? Not so much. CBBC (and to an extent CBeebies) is probably one of the last bastions of live/in-vision continuity now (as is Milkshake I believe) for the target audience and I'm surprised its lasted this long. Yes it isn't live all day, it never has been (save for maybe on launch day) but I suppose Auntie can argue it makes it distinctive, 'cus no other bugger's doing it.

CITV will never be the same again as it used to be; it can't be. The current look I think has already been said has been around for best part of a decade, which has outlived pretty much every other look they've ever had by some considerable margin. 30 years ago a new look was only no more than 18 months away on average, until we get to 1993 and two long lived looks, then a more varied period and what we have now.