CiTV
CiTV (short for Children's ITV) is ITV's brand for children's television output on its primary television channel known as ITV1. The main CiTV segment is broadcast on weekday afternoons, currently between 15:00 and 17:00. CiTV began in January 1983, with Matthew Kelly as its first presenter.
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.
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.
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 has been referred to 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.
CiTV is launching a new ident in September 2006 with new presenters are Sarah-Jane Honeywell and Justin Fletcher.
The Present
The current out-of-vision service is produced by Granada Television, to where it was relocated in early 2005 due to the stripping-down of facilities at Central. There are weekly competitions which go under the title of "Prize Sheep" before the 4.30 programme. Viewers can now get an extra prize if they include the "lucky sheep number" with their answer which is shown on screen before the advert break (or straight after the 4.00 programme). A robot ident is regularly used to introduce shows. Since Tuesday 8th December 2005 CiTV began airing between 3.00pm and 5.00pm weekdays on ITV1.
The Future
ITV has confirmed that it will be launching a dedicated kids channel on 11 February 2006. Co-incidentally the CBBC Channel was launched on 11 February back in 2002. The as-yet untitled station will be available across all platforms, including Freeview, and will timeshare with ITV4, the new male-oriented channel that launched on 1 November 2005. Programming will draw on the expansive CiTV library, although the channel intends to "expand commissioning opportunities and acquisitions" in the coming months. "A dedicated kids channel will enable us to fully exploit our existing library of quality children’s programming and build valuable brands around new properties such as Granada's Pocoyo," said Jonathan Lewis, ITV's Director of Digital Channels. "We will also reap the benefits of being the only commercial children’s channel on Freeview." ITV has been keen to enter the competitive children's multichannel market for some time but "legal difficulties" have proven a persistent obstacle; a possible joint venture with Nickelodeon was recently abandoned because of the complications. Sources tell Digital Spy that Disney's 25% stake in GMTV is the root of ITV's woes, but that the breakfast broadcaster is being placated by handling sales for the new channel. "This is a very competitive and specialised market, in which GMTV's sales team have real expertise and experience," added Lewis. "It makes absolute commercial sense for us to exploit that expertise and work with the team that is closest to that market."
Presenters
Presenters on CiTV over the years have included:
- Matthew Kelly (January 1983)
- Isla St Clair (February 1983)
- Derek Griffiths (one month[?] in 1983)
- Tommy Boyd (first time; one month[?] in 1983)
- Stu Francis (Mid 1980s[?])
- Gary Terzza (1987 - 1988)
- Debbie Shore (1987 - 1988)
- Mark Granger (1988 - 1989)
- Andi Peters (Summer 1988)
- Jeanne Downs (1989 - April 1991)
- Jerry Foulkes (1989 - April 1991)
- Clive Warren (1989 - April 1991)
- "Scally" (dog puppet; 1989 - April 1991)
- Tommy Boyd (second time; April 1991 - February 1993)
- Glenn Kinsey (mornings and Decembers only; Summer 1991 - December 1992)
- Steven Ryde (voice only; February 1993 - May 1998)
- Stephen Mulhern (May 1998 - August 2002)
- Danielle Nicholls (first time; 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)
- Danielle Nicholls (second time; January 2004 - September 2004)
- Andy Jaye brother of co-presenter Laura Jaye(January 2004 - September 2004)
- Laura Jaye sister of co-presenter Andy Jaye(January 2004 - September 2004)
- Tim Dann (voice only; September 2004 onwards)
- Sarah-Jane Honeywell (September 2006)
- Justin Fletcher (September 2006)