[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.