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I rarely/never watched any Children's BBC output during my entire childhood (born 1980). I was firmly a Children's ITV kid (my strongest memories are of Knightmare, Fun House, and Finders Keepers). It was a bit like a sort of "class divide" or similar, to me. I thought of Children's BBC generally (and especially the likes of Blue Peter specifically) as being "dull and worthy", and only appealing to what the Junior School-aged me always called "Daddy's buying me a pony for Christmas"-type children, (and/or their aspirational middle-class parents).
I always felt this way about CBBC as well though I grew up with CITV during the mid 90s to early 00s. It was always a bit too upper class and always a bit too south east-centric for my liking. A lot of their programmes would focus on adults acting childishly which I found really patronising. I used to really hate it when ITV would have the Budget on and I wouldn't have a choice but to watch CBBC!
As for the BBC2 daytime situation, I don't see why there's an expectation for them to constantly broadcast programmes throughout the daytime. Sweden and Denmark's second PSB channels still don't broadcast 24 hours a day and have long periods during the morning and afternoon where they will just broadcast a programme menu and typical Ceefax music. If you look at the overnights on BBC2 you'll see that nothing rates above 0.3 million until the late afternoon with the Daily Politics rarely getting more than 0.2m and most children's content either getting 0.1m or registering as 0. Even if the Mail were to throw a strop about the license fee being even less value with a BBC2 daytime closedown, people would soon forget because no ones watches BBC2 daytime at the moment anyway!
Did anybody really watch Blue Peter when they were young?
I rarely/never watched any Children's BBC output during my entire childhood (born 1980). I was firmly a Children's ITV kid (my strongest memories are of Knightmare, Fun House, and Finders Keepers). It was a bit like a sort of "class divide" or similar, to me. I thought of Children's BBC generally (and especially the likes of Blue Peter specifically) as being "dull and worthy", and only appealing to what the Junior School-aged me always called "Daddy's buying me a pony for Christmas"-type children, (and/or their aspirational middle-class parents).
I always felt this way about CBBC as well though I grew up with CITV during the mid 90s to early 00s. It was always a bit too upper class and always a bit too south east-centric for my liking. A lot of their programmes would focus on adults acting childishly which I found really patronising. I used to really hate it when ITV would have the Budget on and I wouldn't have a choice but to watch CBBC!
As for the BBC2 daytime situation, I don't see why there's an expectation for them to constantly broadcast programmes throughout the daytime. Sweden and Denmark's second PSB channels still don't broadcast 24 hours a day and have long periods during the morning and afternoon where they will just broadcast a programme menu and typical Ceefax music. If you look at the overnights on BBC2 you'll see that nothing rates above 0.3 million until the late afternoon with the Daily Politics rarely getting more than 0.2m and most children's content either getting 0.1m or registering as 0. Even if the Mail were to throw a strop about the license fee being even less value with a BBC2 daytime closedown, people would soon forget because no ones watches BBC2 daytime at the moment anyway!
