The end of CITV

[Arran]

Granada used to show Crossroads at around 4.30 pm (when they first decided to show the series in 1972), but then again, up until that same year, children's programmes were mostly on between 4.45 pm and 5.50 pm.

In the 1970s there were lots of miserable adults who wanted to sit down in the afternoon with a cup of tea and watch programmes like Crossroads or The Cedar Tree. Housewives were ubiquitous back then. Kids can go and wait for their programmes until the time when their parents are cooking dinner.

The concept of children's programmes starting at 4PM was actually in response to an increase in the number of families where both parents worked in order to keep kids off the streets after school before their parents returned home.

[Arran]

CITV is about to disappear forever!

The very last CITV programme block on ITV2 will be on Friday 10 April. It also appears to be the end of the CITV brand.

[Arran]

It's all over for Children's ITV / CITV.

Sunrise: Monday 3 January 1983
Sunset: Friday 10 April 2026

I wonder if anybody has watched the first and last programmes.

I missed out on the 'golden' age of Children's ITV from the Thames and TVS era, apart from some recorded programmes, but I have fond memories of watching Pokemon, My Parents are Aliens, Art Attack and several other programmes back in the era when CITV was a weekday afternoon programme block on a regional analogue terrestial ITV channel. At the time I never thought for a moment that one day CITV would be closed down. I think the writing was on the wall for CITV when ITV closed down the children's programme making department in 2006 and relied on external productions. I was hoping that CITV with its own dedicated channel would start to show many of the classic children's programmes from the 1970s to 1990s, but this never materialised and they didn't even make much attempt to show programmes from the back catalogues of various regional ITV companies now merged into ITV, instead preferring newer material.

It's difficult to deny that from around 2004ish (after Granada and Carlton merged?) ITV has been very uncommitted towards children's programmes, treating them more like an annoying public service broadcasting requirement than anything else. In contrast, many of the regional ITV companies took pride in producing children's programmes.

There are times when I think that ITV should sell off their back catalogue of children's programmes - and possibly the CITV brand as well - to some organisation that's more committed to wanting to broadcast them.