Childrens TV

Rainbow did get three more series from 1994 to 1996. It was retooled twice in that time though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_(TV_series)

Yeah the fact it was retooled twice in just three years suggests they couldn't quite nail what had gone before, but of course if the original show hadn't died with Thames it may have morphed into that anyway, but of course we'll never know. I suppose it could have lived on if they wanted it to but there we go.

Didn’t Geoffrey Hayes do very badly out of it, he ended up being a cabbie driver, he looked frail on Pointless as well.

Well apparently he was a shelf stacker somewhere and long after Rainbow ended he bought the Bungle costume at auction. That aside, yes unfortunately the demise of Rainbow didn't do Mr Geoffrey any good, probably the scourge of being typecast of working alongside a pink hippo, the one-armed "thing" with a zip for a mouth and a bear that insisted on wearing pyjamas to bed yet was perfectly happy to wander around all day naked.

How do rights work with Cartoonito? Bob the Builder, Fireman Sam and Thomas are shown first-run on Milkshake on C5 (Viacom FTA TV) and then repeated on Cartoonito (Turner Pay TV) but Nick Jr (Viacom Pay TV) is also owned by Viacom but these series don't air on it? Why sell repeat rights to another pay tv broadcaster when you have your pay TV channels to show them?
Also shows like Masha and the Bear and Super Wings are shown on Tiny Pop and Cartoonito, how does this work out?
Cartoonito just seems be a repeat channel with content from various broadcasters. It seems to have just a few first-run shows like Curious George, Daisy & Ollie, Little People and Robot Trains.

There's usually different broadcast agreements for FTA and paywall channels which doesn't always mean you can shove it on any channel you happen to own if it happens to be on Freeview. Most modern buying agreements effectively cover all the bases now so you can show it across your portfolio of channels but previously that wasn't always an option.

Cartoonito is a strange beast, like most of these things it started on the Cartoon Network's sister channel as a strand and it was later spun off onto its own channel (Boomerang also started as a strand on the American Cartoon Network and was spun off to house "classic" cartoons). Broadcasters are free to sell their shows to who they like as they can make more from this than they'd generate from ad revenue. Some archive Nickelodeon stuff ended up on Pop and Sister Sister, while not a Nickelodeon production in itself, was aired copiously on Nickelodeon around the world but it has been on various other networks as well.

Maybe those shows were already on Turner's channels before Viacom bought Channel 5? If that's the reason, they can't move them to Nick Jr until the contracts expire.

Curious George previously aired on Disney Junior, and Fireman Sam was on Cartoonito before Milkshake.

Well technically Fireman Sam pre CGI was on the BBC for twenty odd years, the later rehash appeared to have coincided with the show's move to Channel 5 in 2008. It later joined the ranks of being infamous for having an episode banned when apparently an extract from the Quran was "accidentally" shown to be trodden on.

So Fireman Sam was first-run in the UK on Cartoonito for a time?

It's easy enough reminiscing about the past but exactly what sort of children's programmes does OFCOM want to see on ITV1 / C4 / C5, and why?

Are there even enough kids in Britain to support a children's TV production industry in the future or is the market too small?

If you look at what Ofcom says, it isn't actually trying to get more children's programmes on ITV, C4 and C5...


https://www.ofcom.org.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0023/116519/childrens-content-review-update.pdf