[gottago]

IIRC the video was made by the GMTV Kids production team (who were based in the ITV tower) and mainly featured their presenters, and came around the same time the GMTV Kids continuity was axed. The CITV pitch was no doubt a last ditch attempt from the department to try and secure a commission and keep their jobs which was ultimately unsuccessful.

[JAS84]

So it was basically saying "please don't cancel Toonattik"?

[Hybrid]

A recent tweet from Bec Hill (presenter of CITV's current art show Makeaway Takeaway) seems reveals ITV Kids' plan for the year...

"I've been told they're not commissioning *any* original children's content this year." 

Whether this is just a rumor or not is yet to be confirmed.

[CCFG]

I think this has already been said on this thread, but I've heard of something that's being thrown around that ITV will stop commissioning original children's content and will simply acquire... acquisitions for ITVX Kids.

[mumu03]

They've been using a new series of the Dave Spud cartoon in PR as an example to show they're ostensibly still going to commission children's content, but it will not be surprising at all if they quietly stop after that.

If that meant a greater breadth of timeless archive material though them sorting out the rights and acquiring more back catalogues for streaming, I'd imagine some would be happy about that though.

CiTV (yes I spelt it with a lowercase "i" for old times sake) was absolutely on fire in this period. The graphics and set were a large part in sparking my interest in TV presentation. I am firmly of the era of Danielle, Stephen and Tom (and to a lesser extent Andrea) - even the more "educational" programmes like The Big Bang and How 2 were really entertaining and when the long gone Discovery Kids repeated The Big Bang several years later, I enjoyed them just as much as the first time. Such a great show. And who can forget SMTV? It all went downhill very quickly as the budgets got slashed but they burned brightly for that short period of time.

As great as a lot of things that Nigel Pickard helped bring in were, most of all the bigger commitment to live content with in-vision pres and SMTV, hints of what was to come existed - the overreliance on acquisitions e.g. Pokemon and Sabrina due to them rating particularly well, and as previously mentioned the near total lack of provision for true original drama series (though that had been a trend since the mid 90s in fairness).

The 'stripped' schedule experiment in 2001/02 during Janie Grace's tenure and just before the start of the bigger budget cuts was a misfire too, despite coinciding with the greater push for viewer interactivity with text messaging etc. The eventual loss of that did truly sever any meaningful connection CITV had with its audience.

[CATV]

I didn't know they were cutting back. What a shame. I guess the free money they got to make kids tv has now come to an end. Shame CBBC is cutting back as there a few show they could have picked up. I didn't know that they had lost the rights to one of there biggest shows, Horrid Henry. Sad.

[Brekkie]

They've been using a new series of the Dave Spud cartoon in PR as an example to show they're ostensibly still going to commission children's content, but it will not be surprising at all if they quietly stop after that.

Although arguably that was already commissioned and is just being held back. They do seem to go through cycles of commissioning and not commissioning content.

I didn't know they were cutting back. What a shame. I guess the free money they got to make kids tv has now come to an end.

Although the tax break for making kids TV this week has been increased to 39% (from 25% IIRC), so hopefully that'll help things in the industry moving forward. Just like with adult TV nowadays, indeed arguably more so, kids productions are generally a multi-national affair. I'm guessing foreign cartoons given a UK dub probably count as original content too.

[JAS84]

I didn't know they were cutting back. What a shame. I guess the free money they got to make kids tv has now come to an end.  Shame CBBC is cutting back as there a few show they could have picked up.  I didn't know that they had lost the rights to one of there biggest shows, Horrid Henry.  Sad.

That happened four years ago. What I don't get though, is why they only made five series between 2006 and 2019?

[WhoOdyssey]

I didn't know they were cutting back. What a shame. I guess the free money they got to make kids tv has now come to an end.  Shame CBBC is cutting back as there a few show they could have picked up.  I didn't know that they had lost the rights to one of there biggest shows, Horrid Henry.  Sad.

That happened four years ago. What I don't get though, is why they only made five series between 2006 and 2019?

Probably because each series (other than the most recent which had 42) had 52 episodes and lasted over a year.

[Brekkie]

An oddity in childrens TV is that despite the standard being for shows to be stripped on weekdays is that most commissions internationally are for 52 episodes - I guess the idea is if they continually repeat them episodes won't always end up the same day of the week.





Extrapolating the data for February from the BARB viewing ceremony it's easy to see why CITV is going - but arguably the fault of the content on the channel rather than viewing habits for it's demise considering POP, with no big broadcaster behind it to promote it, rates twice as well.



Channel Monthly Reach Monthly Share Average Daily Minutes

CBeebies 7187 1.08 1:47

Pop (inc +1) 2204 0.19 0:19

Nick Jr (inc +1) 3476 0.17 0:17

CBBC 3055 0.16 0:16

Nick Jr 2 2648 0.13 0:13

Tiny Pop (inc +1) 1668 0.11 0:11

CITV 2162 0.09 0:09

Boomerang (inc +1) 1365 0.04 0:04

Cartoonito 1246 0.04 0:04

Nickelodeon (inc +1) 1389 0.04 0:04

Sky Kids 905 0.03 0:03

Cartoon Network (inc +1) 784 0.03 0:03

Nicktoons 982 0.03 0:03

POP Max (inc +1) 766 0.02 0:02


Graphic here: twitter.com 

Untitled

  Source: twitter.com