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'CITV' (short for 'Children's ITV' or 'Children's Independent Television') is the brand name used for the majority of children's television output on ITV's television stations, including the ITV Network, breakfast broadcaster GMTV and the ITV plc-owned CITV Channel as well as non ITV plc owned regions. The flagship CITV strand was previously broadcast on weekday afternoons across all ITV regional stations (normally referred to as ITV1 in England and Wales, STV in central and northern Scotland, and UTV in Northern Ireland) between 15:30 and 17:00, and also on Saturday mornings between 06:00 and 11:30 and on Sunday mornings between 07:25 and 10.00, however the afternoon weekday slot was recently stopped altogether, and therefore CITV only runs on weekend mornings on ITV (see below). CITV also has its own channel, which launched on 11 March 2006.

Contents

History

The Past

The Present

The Future

Saturday Morning

GMTV

Presenters

CITV's 20th Birthday Bash

See also

References

External links

History

The Past

Produced by Central Independent Television, Children's ITV first went on air in January 1983, and consisted of programmes with recorded links in between, initially featuring a different presenter each month. Recorded links continued until 1987, when it started to be broadcast live, echoing Children's BBC which had started two years earlier. Before being known as Children's ITV the timeslot was briefly branded as "Watch IT!", which was presented locally rather than having national continuity.
In 1989, a company called Stonewall Productions won the contract to produce Children's ITV, and it did so until April 1991, when Central won it back.

In February 1993, in-vision presentation was dropped, with Steven Ryde providing the voice-overs for out-of-vision links featuring a wide variety of animated characters. A few months later the Children's ITV name was changed to the more youth-friendly 'Citv', having been used in some form or another since the previous year (the arrangement of upper- and lower-case letters matches that of the logo used at the time). However, the "Children's" wasn't removed from the logo until September 1996, the same month a Digital On-screen Graphic (DOG) was introduced.

This continued until May 1998, when a new in-vision service was introduced, produced by Steven Ryde and fronted by presenters Stephen Mulhern and Danielle Nicholls. A new logo was introduced, and henceforth the service had been referred to as 'CiTV' (until another new logo was introduced in March 2006 and the service became simply known as 'CITV'). The studio space available was initially very small, but in September 1999, CITV started sharing studio space with ''Central News'', allowing room for a large stylised set created by a company called Dorans Propmakers.
Post 2000 however, the overall quality of CITV's output began to drop considerably after peaking in the early 1990s, apparent budget cuts meant fewer shows were made, repeats were much more frequent, and many of their flagship shows were axed. It did not help that in 2001 CITV's controller Janie Grace made the fatal mistake of publicly criticising Carlton and Granada, then ITV's controlling forces, for underinvestment in ITV's children's service. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Grace was removed from her post just as Nigel Pickard was named as ITV's new Director of Programmes. This decline has seemingly continued, thanks to perceived rising costs of original production (and effects on advertising revenues following the ban by OFCOM on junk food advertising within children's schedules), and increasing competition from CBBC and countless digital children's channels for new programmes (especially imported cartoons, typically from America).
CITV has also courted controversy at times with a series of decisions that upset its fan base enormously. The axing of the popular animated show ''ReBoot'' after Episode 9: The Return of the Crimson Binome, in 1998 left a severe metaphorical scar on its audience and provoked a large number of complaints.
Similar axings took place of other popular shows such as ''Cardcaptors'' and ''Digimon'' years later. ''Digimon'' was axed near the end of season 2, and again after one episode into ''Digimon Tamers'' (Season 3). ''Cardcaptors'' meanwhile was axed half way into its second season. As with ''ReBoot'', they were taken off air midway through the series. In the case of ''Digimon'', the remaining episodes were never broadcast on terrestrial TV. ''Cardcaptors'' aired its remaining episodes on the GMTV2 weekday morning strand and as "filler" programming after F1 Grand Prix races.
It is of note that all three shows were action based and that after ''Digimon'', there has been a severe downturn in action cartoons. As of late, the 2003 version of ''Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles'' has been the only action show that has been aired on CITV. The new version of ''Captain Scarlet'' was completed, despite it being much darker then ''ReBoot''.
Public speculation suggests that it is beginning to aim its target audience towards younger viewers, rather than 6-12 years it is being changed to 4-8 years of age leaving many viewers in the older band disappointed with their shows being axed as of 2006, such as ''Help! I'm a Teenage Outlaw'' being one of the many popular programmes to be axed. This suggest that because of the age band change they have chosen television programmes that require less intelligence to understand. ''Digimon'' was also a popular programme that was axed mid-series.

The Present

CITV on the ITV Network is no longer in a timeslot of 3.30pm - 5.00pm.
CITV recently won children's BAFTAs for pre-school animation for ''Pocoyo'', in animation for ''The Amazing Adrenalini Brothers'', drama ''The Giblet Boys'' and presenter Holly Willoughby for ''Saturday Showdown''.
The CITV Channel runs every day from 6am to 6pm and has a mixed genre and age range of programming for both pre-school age and older children. When the CITV Channel goes off the air ITV4 starts to broadcast & when ITV4 finishes at 6am the CITV Channel comes back on the air. The channel is unique in that, while wholly owned by ITV plc, its airtime is sold by GMTV.

The Future

Recent reports have suggested that the future of CITV on the ITV Network is in severe doubt. The company no longer makes its own children's programming^[1], and ITV recently discussed with Ofcom the possibility of massively reducing its children's programming on the ITV Network, with one of the options being to cut kids output from eight hours a week to just two. A formal request was made to the watchdog but was rejected, Ofcom stating that ITV had an obligation to continue to broadcast children's TV on their main, terrestrial channel.^[2]
It has been noted that since the start of 2007, the amount of CITV programming on ITV has diminished greatly with the weekday 3-5 slot being replaced with repeats of ITV dramas, features and new quiz shows.
It has yet to be noted if Ofcom will follow up on its previous rejection and object to this course of action as ITV now uses CITV Channel's 3-6 airtime as a de facto replacement for the ITV block. In March 2007, ITV's executive chairman, Michael Grade, conceded that there would be no more children's programming on ITV in the 'medium to long term', and that there was likely to be no future for CITV output on the main network.^[3]

Saturday Morning

Over the years CITV's flagship show has aired on Saturday mornings, The last show to do this was ''Holly & Stephen's Saturday Showdown'' which is an updated version of ''Ministry of Mayhem''. As of Saturday 10 June 2006 the show was exclusive to the CITV Channel before ending on Saturday 1 July 2006. This continued the recession of Children's output on the ITV terrestrial service. During the 2006 FIFA World Cup, practically no children's programming aired on ITV (except GMTV strands on Saturday and Sunday morning) and all other children's programming aired on the CITV Channel.
In addition to this, the last of the Saturday Morning "Magazine" shows, ''Holly & Stephen's Saturday Showdown'', was replaced by ''Saturday Cooks'' in an attempt to compete with the BBC's own ''Saturday Kitchen'' (However, in the case of BBC, its own Saturday morning programmes now run on BBC Two). The CITV Channel at the moment has a cartoon slot from 9.25am to 12noon every Saturday morning called ''Toonbase'' which heavily uses its airing of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles as the base of its promotion (an irony, given the shift from action cartoons in recent years by both CITV and CBBC).
The most popular show of recent times was ''SMTV Live'', which launched the presenting careers of Ant & Dec and Cat Deeley.
For the full list see: List of programmes broadcast by CITV.

GMTV

Since 11 March 2006, the breakfast-time broadcasting company GMTV, which is partially owned by ITV plc and shares its frequencies, has also adopted CITV branding, although its children's programming remains technically distinct from that produced by ITV plc in that it is bought and controlled separately by the breakfast station, so is not 'True CITV'. The use of the CITV logo and graphics (a move previously avoided by GMTV) was adopted in order to simplify the simulcast of GMTV's programmes on the CITV Channel, which is a joint timeshare venture between the two broadcasters. Where kids' output is not simulcast, GMTV tends to retain its own 'GMTV Kids' branding, especially in the case of its preschool programming. As with all GMTV output, any children's programmes shown before 9.25am do not count towards the ITV Network's public service quota set out by Ofcom since the breakfast broadcaster is technically a separate entity, with its own children's quota to fulfil.
GMTV's airtime sales team sell the advertising for the CITV Channel, making it the only ITV plc owned channel not to be sold through the company's own in-house sales division.

Presenters

Presenters on CITV over the years have included:

★ Matthew Kelly ''(January 1983, November 1985)''

★ Isla St Clair ''(February 1983)''

★ Derek Griffiths ''(March 1983)''

★ David Rappaport ''(October 1983)''

★ Charlotte Coleman (as Marmalade Atkins) ''(April 1983)''

★ Tommy Boyd ''(July 1983)''

★ Roland Rat ''(May 1983, March 1984, June 1985 )''

★ Bonnie Langford ''(November 1984)''

★ Tommy Boyd ''(second time; December 1984)''

★ Rod Hull & Emu ''(December 1985)''

★ Stu Francis ''(April-May 1984)''

★ James Baker ''(June 1986,March 1987)''

★ Gary Terzza ''(1987 - 1988)''

★ Debbie Shore ''(1987 - 1988)''

★ Mark Granger ''(1988 - 1989)''

★ Andi Peters ''(Summer 1988)''

★ Jerry Foulkes ''(March - December 1989)''

★ Clive Warren ''(Mornings; Summer 1989/1990, Afternoons; Summer 1990)''

★ Jeanne Downs ''(Mornings; Summer 1989, Afternoons; January 1990 - April 1991)''

★ "Scally" ''(dog puppet; January 1989 - April 1991)''

★ Tommy Boyd ''(third time; April 1991 - December 1992)''

★ Glenn Kinsey ''(Mornings; Summer 1991, Afternoons; December 1991, December 1992 - February 1993)''

★ Steven Ryde ''(voice only; February 1993 - May 1998)''

★ Stephen Mulhern ''(May 1998 - August 2002)''

★ Danielle Nicholls ''(May 1998 - December 2001)''

★ Tom Darville ''(January 2000 - December 2001)''

★ Andrea Green ''(January 2000 - October 2000)''

★ David Leon ''(September 2001 - December 2002)''

★ Leigh Morrison ''(September 2001 - December 2002)''

★ Leah Charles ''(September 2001 - December 2003)''

★ Michael Underwood ''(August 2002 - December 2003)''

★ Tim Dixon ''(January 2003 - December 2003)''

★ Gail McKenna ''(January 2003 - October 2003, February 2004 - March 2004)

★ Andy Jaye ''(January 2004 - September 2004)''

★ Laura Jaye ''(January 2004 - September 2004)''

★ Tim Dann ''(voice only; September 2004 - current)''

★ Taff ''(voice only; May 2006 - Dec 2006)''

CITV's 20th Birthday Bash

Around Christmas, 2002, Leah Charles and Michael Underwood announced to the viewers that CITV would be celebrating its 20th anniversary on Friday 3 January, 2003. Past presenters and stars of past CITV shows were in the studio to celebrate and clips of past shows from the 80s & 90s were shown.

See also

★ CITV Channel

★ GMTV

★ List of programmes broadcast by CITV

References

1. ITV to end kids' TV production
2. CITV Channel subscription required
3. Grade: no future for kids' programmes on ITV Network

External links

★ CITV

★

★ Watched It - a site containing a wealth of information about past programmes and presenters on both CITV and its rival, CBBC