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CITV Logo
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CITV Logo

This article is about CITV, ITV's children's television brand. For Global Edmonton (Canada), see CITV-TV.

CITV (short for Children's ITV) is the brand name used for the majority of children's television output on the British Channel 3 television stations, including ITV1, breakfast broadcaster GMTV and the ITV plc-owned CITV Channel as well as non ITV plc owned regions. One of its famous presenters is ex-nude model Gail McKenna. The flagship CITV strand is currently broadcast on weekday afternoons across all ITV regional stations (normally referred to as ITV1) between 15:00 and 16:00, and also on Saturday mornings between 06:00 and 09:25, and on Sunday mornings between 07:25 and 09:25. It also has its own channel on Freeview channel 75, Telewest channel 734, NTL channel 76 or 602, Homechoice and Sky Digital channel 624. CITV began on 3rd January 1983.

Contents

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!

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 voiceovers 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.

The CiTV logo between May 1998 & September 2003
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The CiTV logo between May 1998 & September 2003

This continued until May 1998, when a new in-vision service was introduced, 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. The service remained fundamentally the same, with occasional changes to the set and presenter lineup, until September 2004, when an out-of-vision service was re-introduced, most likely due to budget cuts laid down by ITV management.

The CiTV logo between September 2003 & March 2006
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The CiTV logo between September 2003 & March 2006

The Present

CITV is broadcast weekdays between 3.00pm and 4.00pm (originally 5.00pm) and on Sundays between 9.25am and 10.00am on ITV1. The long running saturday morning slot from 9.25am, until recently filled by the show Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown, has been axed from its ITV1 slot and was replaced by Saturday Cooks! on June 10, 2006. However children's shows continue to be broadcast before that time on the Saturday morning (GMTV) and of course, it has its own Channel. As of the new channel's launch, Channel 3 breakfast broadcaster GMTV now also uses the CITV brand across its children's output between 6am and 9.25 on GMTV1, GMTV2 and the CITV Channel. The ITV1 weekday afternoon service from CITV was also updated to reflect the new look as of March 13.

With the new logo the lowercase 'i' was dropped. Now the title is simply 'CITV'.

The Future

A recent Media Guardian article suggests that the future of CITV on ITV1 is in doubt. The service has already been reduced to 1 hour per weekday and has been pushed back to end at 4.00pm.

(Another Media Guardian article says that Granada Kids is closing, and ITV won't be making its own children's programming any more. Digital Spy quote from that article: [link]

ITV is to start discussions with Ofcom about massively reducing its children's programming on ITV1, with one of the options being to cut kids output from eight hours a week to just two. [link]

Presenters

Presenters on CITV over the years have included:

Saturday Morning

Over the years CITV's flagship show has aired on Saturday mornings, The last show to do this was Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown which is an updated version of Ministry of Mayhem. As of Saturday 10th June 2006 the show was exclusive to the CITV Channel before ending on Saturday 1st July 2006. This continued the recession of Children's output on the ITV terrestrial service, Due to the World Cup, practically no children's programming will air on ITV (except GMTV Strands and Sunday morning) and all other children's programming will be aired on the CITV channel during the world cup

The most popular show of recent times was SMTV Live, which launched the presenting careers of Ant & Dec and Cat Deeley.

Saturday Morning shows

For the full list see: List of CITV programmes

GMTV

Since 11 March 2006, the breakfast 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 programing.

See also

External links


ITV
British television | Channels
Regions
North Scotland: Grampian Television | Central Scotland: Scottish Television | Scottish/English Border: Border
North and North West England: ABC, Granada | North East England: Tyne Tees | Yorkshire: Yorkshire | Northern Ireland: UTV
Wales and the West of England: TWW, WWN, ITSWW, HTV | Midlands: ATV, ABC, Central | East Anglia: Anglia
London: Rediffusion, ATV, Thames, LWT, Carlton | Southern England: Southern, TVS, Meridian
South West England: Westward, TSW, Westcountry | Channel Islands: Channel Television
Breakfast: TV-am, GMTV | Teletext: ORACLE, Teletext Ltd.
News: ITN, ITV News Sport: ITV Sport
ITA | IBA | ITC | ''Ofcom
ITV1 | ITV2 | ITV3 | ITV4 | CITV | CITV Channel | ITV Play | ITV HD | Men & Motors
ITV News Channel | ITV Digital
ITV plc | SMG plc | UTV plc

 

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