CBBC Channel

Hm, that's a shame. They did repeat Series 10 a while back prior to commissioning the new Raven so presumably that did well enough to justify the reboot?

Mind you like most of these reboots it could never be the same as the original so I suppose...

I remember when my brother was eight, he wrote to be a contestant on the show, but as he had to be older and the show was produced by BBC Scotland, he couldn't do it.

The fact it's BBC Scotland doesn't matter, it'll be the age. They probably had people from all over the country but I think the nature of the programme meant it was probably only suitable for older children, secondary school age upwards (and I believe they can film for longer than a younger child could too, since the concept of the show was largely scripted, even if they did just mostly stand there and gawp at the host while they reeled off their spiel for that segment).

The very first series of Raven used child actors as contestants, but even then the show was very different from what went on afterwards, I posted a video once in the YouTube Gold thread here which showed Raven as an entirely different personality from what he became later on.

Is CBBC still strictly speaking aimed at the under 12s or have they risen that age profile again in recent years?

Some very interesting bits of CBBC One continuity in the last week prior to the launch of the CBBC Channel, taken after that week's editions of Grange Hill:

From the last Tuesday, where Angelica and newbie Ortis Deley are in the Newsround studio as Studio 9's being given a makeover for the relaunch the next Monday.


And from the following Thursday, in the newly renovated TC2:


Did the new guys begin presenting the afternoon strand from the first week of February 2002, in an attempt to make the transition to the new era much smoother?

The proper Grange Hill theme!

I always assumed that they weren't in Studio 9 and that it was in TC2.
On a similar note, I'm aware that Pres originally shared a studio with Xchange and Newsround - how would that all be laid out?
Also, there were elevators in the CBBC and CBeebies studios, so that's a fun link to the channels for those who are savvy enough to notice.

That begs the question: what about the CBBC on Choice links? Where they pre-recorded much earlier in advance due to Studio 9 undergoing an overhaul for the CBBC One/Two links?

Here, the final glimpse of the September 2001 set.

I think CBBC on Choice was often recorded waaaaay in advance, it was usually Adrian Dickson with a single camera and I can't recall a single other person presenting for about 2 years, which means they must have recorded over whatever holidays he took.

One other point about the week they spent redecorating TC9 - the breakfast show links continued to be from the old TC9, so must have been recorded in bulk for that period.

The "preview" afternoon from the new studio was TC2 as it was already built. That week they came from Blue Peter on Monday, Newsround on Tuesday, XChange (I think) on Wednesday, CBBC channel on Thursday (both TC2) and The Saturday Show on Friday. TC2 was laid out with XChange on one side and CBBC channel on the other, with a slim projection wall between the two that would often be removed if needed for camera angles. Newsround's tiny bulletin studio was round the back of the CBBC set (they once did a walk-through).

I was getting into how TV worked during this period and I used to wonder when on earth XChange got to rehearse...guessing it may have been during the Class TV strand? Unless it was in another space entirely. They did have a complicated setup to give them space though - after 1735 the channel would move into TC9 which gave them a free run in TC2 for their late programme. Later on, the channel would spend all weekend in TC9 to give Dick and Dom a free run for Da Bungalow which was obviously a major set redresss.

And yes the lifts were a nice common touch - and as many people have pointed out, the original channel set with the lift, plasma screen and doors at either end provided the basic frame for the Bungalow set build within it in TC2. Another more obvious common point was the bugs in both sets of idents but tt was only years later however I realised there was a common musical theme in the idents though. It's very subtle though. Listen at 03:05 and 03:06, that section of the melody (which appears in various forms throughout this video) is essentially the same as the bit of the CBeebies theme that often had/has "CBeebies, CBeebies" sung to it.




(00:06 and 00:07 here)

Another point I've recalled about CBBC on Choice - it took a while for the service to move to widescreen and the re-edited idents in September 2001, which further supports it being "in the can" for a period in advance.

That reminds me, does anyone recall the CBeebies preview they had on New Year's Day, and if the CBeebies presenters did the links for Tweenies the final week pre-relaunch?