[cable]

Back when I was younger CITV was great, Fun house, MPAA, ZZZap etc. that 1998-2005 period was exquisite.

BUT CITV hasn't really been great since the ban on junk food advertising 2005. They were limited as they could not set up CITV Ltd which would allow them to properly exploit IP and merchandise the same way BBC WW did with Teletubbies etc.

The channel was late to market, originally envisaged in 2001 as a partnership with NICK, INK never was realised and after mutual backing away the CITV channel launched in 2006. By this time it was placed at the end of the kids section on Cable and Satellite, On Freeview it was placed 3rd. The audience targeting 6-12 narrowed its audience when it previously under 16.

Once the afternoon block ended, the CITV channel has never really commissioned similar to pre 2005. The loss of Children's in-house production saw and end to that,Yes, They had some success with Thunderbirds (2013) and Animated Mr Bean but paled in comparison to the CBBC channel. They did increase hours to 9PM, inline with CBBC and to be fair its 2013 look was better than the 2 previous efforts where they tried to align the brand with the corporate image.

The YACF did incentivise them to commission kids content but with a ever dwindling audience for linear and the loss of the fund, it was basically CPR and without it the channel has now flatlined.

The future does lie online, kids are increasingly turning their attention towards Disney+ and the likes of streaming services, but also Youtube and TikTok and video games. That won't change no matter how nostalgic people get. one thing I would like to see in. this new kids area is an archive of kids content through the years, whilst Britbox had older kids shows e.g. thunderbirds and press gang, these are lost within the genre categories, if they do have FAST channels of curated kids content then that would be a plus too.