CITV Art Attack, New Episodes?

Everyone who has left TV has died or is an alcholic or hooked on drugs - 95% of Quiz Call presenters are on 80-a-day, will only drink gin and are on crack - the other 5% died of cancer of the lungs, liver, a heart attack, an angina attack whilst parking in front of a train after bouts of depression.

There are two Kenan and Kel rumours that are or have been going round:

The original one which has been around as you say for years (Kel Mitchell dead in car crash) and another one that was started in 2006 saying Kel Mitchell dead in accident at home. Both originated on MySpace. Allegedly.

The sad thing is people believe everything they read and send it on to everybody as a truth. Anybody can start a hoax to say some incredibly famous celebrity is dead, Snopes has a big list of them. In this day and age where you can cross-reference sources and what not from all the major players, people don't take 15 seconds to check something before pressing the forward button.

ISTR that Live and Kicking were bombarded with calls one week asking if that rumour was true and they had to say on air that it was all lies.

There still doing films!

# Snakes on a Plane - 2006
# Space Chimps -

while the thin one well.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgP3UwvQvzo

I think Kenan is a regular on Saturday Night Live (NBC) last I heard.

There's a video from Kel himself on youtube posted earlier on this year.

Is the series Mr Mack a new one for CITV? Never noticed it until recently...

Well exactly, I heard that Kel one ages ago. There was one on the Doctor Who Forums earlier this year stating Tom Baker had died, then ten minutes later after looking into it the original poster realised a friend of his sent it as a joke on a page that let's you enter a name of someone & state what they died of

Yeah, I think it is. It's a tots programme called Captain Mack. It looks quite low budget, which could explain why they commissioned it, but the credits are credited as 2008, so I presume that it was a recent commission.

It's weird that now that they increase the amount of programmes because of creating a channel, but are only going to be commissioning a handful of shows. I suppose the other option is to go through the back catalogue of CITV programmes, see if any of them still work today, and recommission that way.

I think the problem with the channel is that it now lacks a strong identity, which is mainly down to the fact that CBBC's identity is a hell of an identity, especially when coupled with the personalities of Ed & Oucho (and friends) fronting at least a section of the day. It's that interaction that's missed from CITV, something which when Steve Ryde was at the helm seemed to be something that they prided themselves on, especially when you think that they were the first people to introduce texting into a TV show.

Captain Mack is a new production (though production started in October last year and ended in February this year) that was recorded and stuck together in Cardiff.



CITV channel seems to have started wheeling out things that haven't been seen for a while. Butterfingers is being repeated again, full episodes of Tricky TV were on-show previously (having been cut to pieces as Tricky Quickies) and Captain Scarlet is back at the end of the month. The Fugitives was shown also, shame it only lasted one series as it had a lot of potential plot-wise.

My Parents Are Aliens continues to prop up the schedule though, even though there's no doubt its still a universally popular programme even if it was ultimately ruined in the final series. Perhaps another major success story could be all it takes to get new commissions for the CITV Channel.



Might have a hard time coming up with a character that's going to beat Oucho The Cactus. He gets more hits on Google now than Otis The Aardvark but not as many as Gordon The Gopher.

Mind you CITV's only been "blessed" with one puppet character that was long-term - Scally the Dog - and has been mostly fronted by actual presenters with varying tastes of commitment, appeal and talent. I won't name any names in that department, suffice to say it's going to have a bloody good one to knock Oucho out of his plant pot so to speak.



The 1993-1998 out-of-vision era wasn't particularly spectacular even if it did look like it was stuck together with sticky tape presentation-wise. But the budget was bigger then, commissions and imports were coming out of their ears and you were lucky if you could find a repeat in the 105min minute daily block on ITV. I may be bias but the programmes were better then.

I think that from the beginning of the CITV ( or Children's ITV era ) from 83 to the end of the eighties was the best time for them programming wise. And it was only due to this that the BBC got their act together first of all revamping Play School, then a couple of years later scrapping the afternoon repeat.
Also, as we know, BBC then realised that it would be better to copy the rivals and have an in-vision presenter.
The only unfortunate fact at present is that ITV seems to be winning the daytime ratings battle without any children's tv.

I agree with your points Neil.

As for Ed & Oucho, after the satillite channels dropped continuity, and CITV & CBBC headed in the same direction, they've come along and added just a slight glimmer of hope in the children's sector, and they're tremendous at it too.

As for CITV, I don't think that they could go down the route of desk and puppet as it would just seem like they were copying a successful format. If they were to do anything, it should be more of a fomer CITV with presenters, comps and interaction, something like the old Studio Disney wouldn't be a bad thing, though I think we'd be lucky to get a room with a presenter in.

As for the Steve Ryde era, I was thinking more of the Steve Ryde production era when it went back in vision in 1998, but more so from 2000 when they moved studios, and it became more interactive.

Though I will say that the programmes were great. Saying that when you look at 1999/2000 they were in their hayday with imports (mainly from Nickelodeon), great live series with Top 10 of Everything, Mad For It and SM:TV Live of course, they had more factual/make programmes with Art Attack, finger tips, brilliant creatures, how 2, and the quick trick show to name a few, and the drama and gameshows were still present along with comedy, back when My Parents Are Aliens was new.

I can't understand who made that decision with the last series of My Parents Are Aliens, the writing was great, they could have done anything. Surely it would have made more sense to continue with what everyone knew, and just keep replacing the kids rather than to try and recreate the show, the whiping of the memories was the worst idea to come out of that programme, and ruined 7 great years. If they'd have stuck with the old idea, it may still be around today.

Part of me was thinking that with just a small budget to spend on programmes at the moment, wouldn't it be worth putting money into a cheap Saturday Morning programme, to get viewers interested and then to bring in the new programmes to be included in that? Saying that I was watching MoM the other day on DVD, and they killed that programme in its prime, even if the Saturday Showdown did manage to pull things back around quick, it just wasn't the same as the atmosphere with the live audience there. Who knows what could have happened to MoM without a yearly battle against Dick & Dom.