CITV: Children’s TV channel will shut in September following launch of ITVX Kids
Children’s TV channel CITV – liked for youths’ classics together with Danger Mouse and Rainbow – will shut subsequent month.
It is making manner for ITVX Kids, the youngsters’s service on ITV‘s new streaming service ITVX, which launched earlier this summer time.
ITV instructed Sky News: “As a consequence of this new streaming approach and responding to the changing ways children and their parents are increasingly accessing content, the CITV broadcast channel will close after the summer holidays on 1st September.”
Rainbow – with George, Bungle, Zippy and Geoffrey, and Rod, Jane and Freddy, was an ITV Children’s basic. Pic: Fremantle Media/Shutterstock
ITVX changed ITV Hub in December 2022, with the general public service broadcaster making strikes to compete with streaming giants together with Netflix and Amazon Prime Video.
Children’s ITV launched in 1983, sitting throughout weekday late afternoons, with the digital CITV channel following in 2006.
Aimed at children aged 5 to 12, a few of its best-loved reveals embrace My Parents Are Aliens, Fraggle Rock, The Worst Witch, Children’s Ward, Raggy Dolls, Woof, Art Attack and Horrid Henry.
Classics which have earned cult standing over time embrace Ghost Train, Fun House, Knightmare, Press Gang, Danger Mouse, Trap Door and Count Duckula.
Pre-school hits included Rainbow, Rosie And Jim and Button Moon.
Actor Matthew Kelly was the primary presenter on the channel in 1983, showing within the hyperlinks between the reveals, whereas a lot later in 1993, Stephen Mulhern and Danielle Nicholls grew to become the hosts of the channel.
CITV celebrated its thirtieth anniversary in January, with an “Old Skool” schedule of programmes all through the weekend.
ITV says ITVX Kids will “supercharge” its presence in streaming, doubling its present children’ content material providing with greater than 100 reveals and over 1,000 hours of programming – together with comedy, gameshows, reside motion, animation and sport.
It might be aimed toward each school-age and pre-school age youngsters, the broadcaster stated.
Existing favourites, together with Lloyd of the Flies, Lily’s Driftwood Bay, Claude, Mumfie, Mystery Lane and The Rubbish World of Dave Spud, will all be obtainable on ITVX Kids.
The animated collection of Mr Bean, Teletubbies Let’s Go, Sooty and Bob The Builder can even be there.
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ITVX has additionally stated the service’s ambition is to have all of its youngsters’s content material subtitled, and round 20% of it audio described.
ITV will keep its LittleBe pre-school section on ITVBe and also will supply some youngsters’s content material within the early mornings on ITV2 from September.
Recent BARB viewing information has proven that whereas the typical quantity of broadcast TV minutes of youngsters’s TV channels watched by 4-year-olds per week has declined by 62% since 2019, viewing has risen by 30% in the identical interval, demonstrating the “streaming first” development in viewing habits for younger folks.
The BBC has additionally introduced plans to cease broadcasting its youngsters’s CBBC channel – dwelling to reveals together with Blue Peter and Newsround – on TV sooner or later.
Despite the rise in on-line viewing, some have argued that not all youngsters have entry to the web.
Spending on authentic child’s content material within the UK has been slashed following the 2006 ban on promoting junk meals to youngsters.
The Young Audiences Content Fund – a £44m fund designed to assist assist youngsters’s programming on channels together with ITV and Channel 5 – was scrapped by the federal government final 12 months.