As a consequence of ITV’s new streaming approach towards children’s programming, and responding to the changing ways children and their parents are increasingly accessing content, the CITV broadcast channel will close in early Autumn.
The CITV channel will cease to air once the ITVX streaming destination for kids has been rolled out across platforms and devices, over the summer holidays. However, ITV have noted that they will maintain the LittleBe pre-school segment on ITVBe and will offer some children’s content in the early mornings on ITV2 from September with strong cross promotion to ITVX.
The CITV Channel launched in 2006 to provide a dedicated service of programming output, the CITV brand itself had launched as Children’s ITV in 1983 the strand originally aired on the main ITV network in the late afternoon and at weekends.
A short-lived earlier brand, Watch It!, launched in 1980 with each local region presenting children’s programmes with their regular continuity announcers using the umbrella brand. Watch It! was conceived by the promotions department at ATV Network in Birmingham. CITV was dropped as a strand on ITV1 in 2007.
Now, just over 40 years after Children’s ITV originally launched, the broadcaster is to launch a dedicated destination for kids on ITVX – ITVX Kids – with more content than ever before, across a range of titles appealing to both school age and pre-school age children.
Craig Morris, Managing Editor of ITVX:
“We’re really excited to launch this dedicated destination for kids on ITVX, which will be home to a wealth of content including new series, recognisable brands and existing favourites for a range of ages, all in one child-safe area, with editorial curation to guide viewing. The wealth of content will be available to stream for free, with the option for parents to choose ad free viewing, through a subscription to ITVX Premium.”
Launching in July 2023, and rolling out across the school summer holiday period, the new consolidated children’s offering will also see ITV taking its approach to 6-12s content, streaming-only, from early Autumn 2023.
