BBC to revamp kids' channels

Well, editorially ambitious to maintain the range of existing content in the brave new world and get it right. Still very important to interact with kids etc, as rightly commented upon by NorthDown2 earlier.

Oh so will it be presenters on a CSO?Or are the presenters going?

There'll still be presenters. They play an important part.

This is personal agnst but when the CBBC channel originally lauched I thought great because with a whole channel to fill they would dig out and repeat all the kids shows from the early 90's (I was a kid), but course that was wishful thinking

They did repeat 'some' of them in the CBBC On Choice days.

I'm 23 now btw but am a nerd/weird so would want to watch those shows again.

But do there own the right to show half the show there orgnail showed

I sure I stated this eles where but ITV doesn't control alot of it own cataloge, with most of it own by private companys, so no chance of them spending the money

"Presenter links between programmes will be cut and replaced with hi-tech links"

What on earth is a high tech link? Sounds like just using a voice over on some fancy graphics, CITV style

"Our conclusion was we need to do fewer programmes, better"

Surely they need to do the same number of programmes better due to the unique way they are funded? It sounds to me like we will have loads of repeats

I certainly do, and it didn't bother me then because if I was tuned to BBC1 at teatime it was to watch the programmes.


Some of the bugs executions, and indeed some of the output from the era, gave the impression CBBC was dumbing down. The current look portrays CBBC as having matured but not "gone boring".

Care to expand on how the bugs suggested "dumbing down"?

(I hate the phrase "dumbing down" passionately.)

What I really detested about the new idents was when recording Class TV (and now with a DVD recorder editing out the idents!) was the sound level on the arrows ident was really loud at the beginning of the ident after the closing titles of a programme where music usually faded at the end. The bugs had a low 'muttering' type noise as if the bugs were talking to one another which crescendoed and so prepared you for an increase in volume.

BTW if anyone had any power within CBBC land, please can we have a DOG during December which is static for Class TV? The fairy dust one last year was really annoying when showing to the class - while watching a sombre biography about Charles Dickens (part of the Let's Write Non-Fiction for KS2) the ident kept changing to fairy dust.
The one good thing about the arrow ident set was that the DOG during th rest of the year was more static than the bug version. Personally I'd like to be rid of them during Class TV..but that's be just wishful thinking.

In the period that followed February 2002, CBBC churned out several programmes not of its usual standard, ie. Dick & Dom and CBBC at Fame Academy. And Blue Peter dressing its presenters in S&M gear one Christmas. Things have improved since then, though we still have the odd show ie. Stupid, which panders to the crudest of schoolboy humour.

The change of on-screen look was mostly coincidental to this, though it was unwise to have Christmas idents in 2002 based around flatulent reindeer.

How can you judge what kids these days like? You're a 30-something-year-old with a moral judgement of a conservative 75 year old.

What's wrong with a programme that appeals to schoolboy humour when it's actually aimed at schoolboys?!

You seem to look at the early 1980s with rather rosy specs on. What you forget is that much of the 90 minutes per day of children's output was imported cartoons. There was some crappy historical nonsense on a Friday which generally involved Isla St Clair droning on about a long dead poet, or repeats of Children's Film Foundation movies that were dated even then. You'd five editions of Newsround a week (there are at least 6 per DAY now).

Much of what went out back then simply wouldn't cut it today. It was a different era, in the same way that Muffin The Mule wouldn't have worked in the 70s or 80s. Most kids live in households with getting on for 30 children's channels. Much of what's on those channels is crap - but what's on CBBC is far from crap. It's better by far than what we had to watch.

You've got to be kidding! It's children's television for goodness sake. What's the point if there isn't farting animals and toilet jokes?