[sky303]

I never quite understood why the children's channels aired during the dayv (or overnight for that mattter).  I know home school is a thing but realistically the bulk of the core audience would have been at school - and they aren't going to air those channels in their linear fashion - unless Dennis The Menace and Gnasher is "educational" , which I doubt somehow.

After school okay, but once you get past 10pm its diminishing returns surely?  Unless they're doing the "loaded advert" thing in their peak periods and going all night with few (or no) adverts...

The home ill from school crowd? They might have a small adult audience who might be home watching cartoons and etc. for comfort instead of the other channels, not that would be a large audience factor.  Maybe it was good for recording, before catchup became more robust? CITV going off at 6 and CBBC going off at 7, record some programmes from daytime to run after 6/7pm before bedtime?    But that is different compared to the US where  Nickelodeon and Disney Channel run programming for pre-school aged children in the hours then around 2 or 3pm switch to older children, then do older children programmes all weekend and expand during summer to run them longer.