CBBC Birthday thread

One thing I've noticed with old CBBC videos (like the above) is that it seems that both school holiday & sunday morning stuff from Studio A prior to the full time move there in 1994 had a credits sequence & copyright date, whereas the broomcupboard stuff had neither (I don't think the morning birthday cards, which were also from Studio A did either). Makes me wonder if the studio content was considered a proper programme, rather than just contuinity (which the broomcupboard stuff was), which is why they had credits & copuright. After the full time move to Studio A, they did ditch end credits, though they did then put a copyright date at the end of all the broadcasts, which I think continued until the launch of the CBBC Channel in 2002.

Bit unfortunate that said pre-1994 Studio A content wasn't aknowledged in last weeks documentry at all, they made out as if it was all broomcupboard prior to that point. Whereas, especially by 1993/94, when you added together the Sundays, brthday mornings, holidays and moves to BBC2, it was probably getting nearly as much screentime as the broomcupboard was. Phillipa & Zoe were mainly Studio A presenters, as was Toby for his first year or so, and they had the game of Maggot Moments which IIRC only ever came from Studio A, yet none of that was mentioned! I know they only had an hour to cover 30 years, and the beoomcupboard is what people remember, but Studio A was still a reasonable chunk of CBBC's output in the late 80s/early 90s, and it felt a bit off for it to be ignored.

And first time I've posted on TVF in 8 1/2 years (though I've been reading), had to set up a new account as my old one was suspended through inactivity!

Yes, the Broom Cupboard was in vision continuity, with the 'announcers' playing in shows and graphics. So they wouldn't have had credits. I have a feeling the birthday card slot was the same even though it was in a different studio (the announcers would operate a vision mixer for close ups of the cards).

Dunno, the early 90s birthday slots I've seen do look like they were controlled from the gallery- moving & zooming cameras and no sign of the presenters controlling anything. The 1992/93 stuff is intriguing as it does use same set as the school holidays, but has a CBBC banner in place of the video wall. Presumably the screens were hired in, and as Sunday mornings were only a few months a year at that point, they weren't going to pay to have it there outside of those times. I'm sure the fixed camera with self-op bit was only bought in after the full time move to A in 1994!

The self op bit for the birthdays was introduced with the move to A permanently.

I guess they flipped the budget around, staffing the gallery and cameras for the afternoons, self op in the mornings. That desk worked directly into pres rather than through the gallery.

Just spotted Bobby the Banana in the background of the birthday show...

Interestingly (within the context of this nerdy subject!) I've found this (horrifically encoded) clip of the birthday slot at some point in 1992 with Toby Anstis, clearly after the launch of the new set which coincided with him joining at Easter, but with the old birthday slot set. So it looks like they didn't use that set for all Studio A CBBC at first, perhaps due to the lack of video wall I wonder?



And while we're at it, you don't get CBeebies presenters pointing out the VT clock, saying hi to the VT department and referring to them moving location!

I think they just did credits on summer holidays and Sunday mornings because they wanted to do them to make it look like a proper programme, they didn't have to do them and it probably filled some awkward gaps. It sounds idiotic now but in those days Sunday mornings were amazing because you had kids' shows for something like four or five hours, which was totally unthinkable a few years earlier, so it felt like a really big thing, and the use of credits emphasised that. Pretty sure they weren't obliged to do them, it was just a little quirk CBBC introduced to make it look a bit more complex and important than it actually was.



Er, the first summer of the Broom Cupboard was in 1986 when, for the only time ever, they had the Broom Cupboard in the mornings and in the afternoons they had generic BBC1 continuity. They also did that at Christmas 1986. In the Easter of 1986 they did Roland Rat's Easter Extravanganza - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1986-04-01 - although the actual programmes were hilariously at odds with Roland's anarchic approach, with Lassie, Jackanory and Play School, and indeed I remember my mum telling me to switch it off as she perceptively noticed I was only watching it for the sake of it. They didn't have any type of branding at Easter 1987.

It was the autumn of 1987 you had the big expansion of CBBC, with Simon Potter and then Simon Parkin joining, and I know Andy Crane said to Off The Telly that there was a particular drive to start a team of presenters because when Pip Schofield left it was obviously a big jolt for the audience. In the autumn of 1987 you had CBBC on Sunday mornings under the Now on Two banner, and you had Studio A business that Christmas as well, and from then on you had CBBC at every Easter, Christmas and May Half Term as well as the summer. They didn't do the February or October half terms for years, long after I stopped being in the target audience, not did they do the May Day Bank Holiday.

Usually there'd be a different set for every holiday period, I remember Andi Peters making his debut in the May Half Term in 1989 on a stripy set I think they only used that week, though sometimes they'd use them for a couple of holidays - the spaceship theme they launched for the summer of 1989 was recycled for Sunday mornings and Christmas that year.

Would the unions at the time not have insisted on credits for anything other than continuity?

Yeah, of course for the first series of Going Live, the whole morning was billed as Saturday Starts Here, with Pip and Saz often doing the links - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1987-09-26

One I vividly remember which I'd love to see again was when I think there was a strike on which affected studio sets and the links in Saturday Starts Here revolved around Trevor and Simon being charged with getting the studio ready and demolishing it, and then having to rebuild it themselves, hence setting the scene for the episode of Going Live that followed which came from a very odd set indeed, I remember there was a desk which Pip and Saz sat in front of on director's chairs. Funny the things, eh?

Then as you say in 1989 it became a self-contained thing in its own right - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbcone/london/1989-10-07 - and interestingly that was also the only time it actually moved to BBC2 during the Commonwealth Games - http://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/1990-01-27 - whereas previously it would have been dropped completely. Then after Going Live ended that year, as you say it went back to just the announcer, as it would be whenever Going Live wasn't on in previous years. The Saturday Broom Cupboard I recall started when Parallel 9 began in the summer 1992.



Yes, up until 1993, kids shows would only be on Sunday mornings between October and January (and on Easter Sunday) because for the rest of the time there was adult education on BBC1 and the OU on BBC2, and the only kids show would be the Playbus repeat at 9am on BBC1. But from 1993 there were fewer OU programmes and they could now run kids shows all year round on BBC2, but only from 9am. So as well as that they added the "breakfast show" bit on BBC1 before Breakfast With Frost (which had only just started), though that ended at 8.15 so there was still an hour in between to twiddle your thumbs, and they rebranded the Saturday Broom Cupboard to go with it. The OU still went off completely between October and January so in those months it would be on BBC2 all morning without a break.

I wish I didn't remember all these things, but there you go.

Well, they didn't have them on the news, did they? They didn't have them on loads of programmes.

This? I think there's a few...

http://up.metropol247.co.uk/092015/1442358737_1640017479.mp3

Zoe Ball here doing the broom cupboard, although it's the BBC2 one.

Also an advert for The Movie Game which brings back memories, great theme tune.

Also Hart Beat which along with the more modern Grange Hill theme is one of those things that is always entirely forgotten in all talking head retrospectives.

And finally, I'm sure that was the wrong CBBC ident before Newsround, they usually had a more newsy version.