Children's ITV in the Mid 80's

Could have been technical limits of the previous system that forced their hand as opposed to what the BBC were doing, after all down the history of the two services CITV has often been behind CBBC in some regard, such as live presentation (two years behind), a website of some sort (about three years) and their own branded channel (about four years).

I’m interested as to why Central was chosen as the company to network CITV. I believe they (or ATV) were responsible for the previous Watch It! graphics, though that service was never networked and it was up to the regional companies as to how they promoted that strand of programming. Only selected children’s programmes were fully networked prior to 1983.

I presume that because Central were already heavily involved in the presentation of children’s programmes they were the natural choice to network CITV. ATV and Central had also networked schools programmes for many years and designed the associated presentation. But there must be a story out there as to how the Children’s ITV service came about - were any other companies interested in running the service and invited to apply?

They networked schools programmes as well, maybe they used their experience there in deciding they'd be good at running the children's service too.

There certainly was a competitive tender, because of course in 1989 Central lost the contract, before winning it back again in 1991, and Andy Crane told my old stomping ground Offthetelly that at one point he was employed as a consultant by Central when the contract came up for renewal to help them retain it. Central certainly seemed the best placed to do it - as was mentioned on the old Watched It website, they had a massive promotions department which seemed to be considered the best and most innovative in ITV, and a lot of it was based around promotions (it was basically one long promotion).

Wasn't ATV one of the companies pushing for a proper kids slot on itv? I wonder what years Andy Crane become the consultant - 1993 one?