[Rex]

I would think this would need Ofcom approval and some further guarantee on future investment in children's programming.

Absolutely not. CITV isn't a public service and constitutes as a commercial channel like the rest of ITV's offshoot services. Bottom line; if it doesn't make money, why continue to invest in it? If Ofcom were involved, the ITV News Channel wouldn't have been closed as swiftly as it was back in 2005, and it would take a longer process for ITV to build up their multichannel presence. 

Besides, it hasn't been a huge surprise that the channel is being switched off for a myriad of reasons:
- ITV is going all in with ITVX being a one stop shop for everything ITV, even children's programming
- CITV was completely ignored in the November 2022 rebrand. ITV pushed back plans for a refresh for 2023, which we now know is a streaming-first approach.
- Cross channel promotion has been minimal for several years now
- CITV rates extremely low for ITV. It's an outlier from all of ITV's offshoots (which consistently rate well) It's lost a significant portion of its audience where they are opting to watch on-demand instead of tuning into the channel.

At least they are offering some consolation by turning back time and giving some airtime to children's programming on ITV2. Reminds me of the days of GMTV2/Action Stations.