[Joe]

I feel like sometimes people forget that ITV is a business and its aim is to make money. That is goal number one, and other values and ambitions come second to that. So it is natural that they got shot of children’s programming. Since the junk food advertising ban, the programming just clearly doesn’t bring in money, or not enough to justify the expense of running a children’s service.

In many ways that is fair enough – they are a public service and therefore have to broadcast things they might not want to and that may in themselves be loss-making, but they are fulfilling this by broadcasting the kids’ stuff on ITV2. If you don’t think this is good enough, arguably you should take this up with Ofcom, not ITV.

As for the junk food ad ban itself - I agree with its aims, though I wonder if mandating food companies produce less processed/unhealthy crap would have been the solution rather than simply who it is marketed to. But that’s a political discussion about liberalism and the impact of policies on people’s lives, so not for here.

In short, ‘care’ doesn’t come into the decision, to a point. If an entire channel makes a loss and doesn’t drive people to other services, why would a business continue with that?

Which leads me to my final point: you could make an argument that there is something of a void for ITV in gaining brand recognition to under 18s which is only partially filled at the moment. When I was a kid it was CBBC for me, which led into the more grown up BBC stuff as I aged. If ITVX can make a success of their kids stuff then there is no problem. This forum has a hard time accepting that streaming is the future but it is true – it’s more a case of which steamers will survive that whether streaming itself will survive.