CITV Gas Street cut-outs

I was watching a few CITV continuites from the 1998-2004 Gas Street era and it got me wondering, what ever happened to the cardboard(?) cut-outs of the characters from the CITV shows (e.g. Hey Arnold!, Watership Down, Pokémon, Digimon, The Worst Witch, Art Attack etc.)?

If they were made from cardboard and didn't go in a skip 16 years ago I'll be amazed. Even if they were made from something more durable, the chances of them still existing are pretty much zero.

When the decision was made to shift output from Birmingham to Manchester in 2004 and ultimately take it out of vision, there would have been no need for the cutouts, since its pointless having them in an environment where nobody can see the damn things.

Considering the entire environment of where CITV was produced in that era no longer exists (the Gas Street building still does, but it is only used for Central News and also acts as the "Viewer Feedback" hub), and the fact they got rid of the entire Lenton Lane complex in 2004 as well, its probably safe to assume the cutouts seen on screen were junked years ago (and as the programmes on offer changed, it was pointless having a large Hey Arnold cutout in the background when they didn't have the rights to it any longer for example, so that would have gone as and when).

While they were most likely skipped long ago, you'd be surprised how long some of this sort of stuff can hang around for. The walls of TV Centre still had plenty of ancient publicity photos by the time the building closed, and there were some giant fibreglass BBC Three blobs lurking in a storeroom in 2013. (I'm not sure if they made it to the auction or if someone managed to sneak them out as a souvenir)

Skip.

They're in the same location as the TVS archive...

Which, as all good TV Forum members know, the location of which is a state secret and if you do happen to find it, is guarded by massive Men in Black style memory zappers supplemented by instantaneous transporters that take you back to where you started your journey on the quest of the archive, so you'll get your memory wiped and you won't have a clue where you were going in the first place.

Not about the cut-outs as much, but I've posted this in another "CITV at Gas Street" thread before and I thought I would post it here.

In 2003/04, CITV shared Central News's set, which means that (in a way) the studio was split in half.

This video shows what that set looked like with a glimpse of the CITV set, where you can see a picture of one of the characters from Rugrats if you look hard enough.

I still love the guys reaction when he spots the weatherboard

Which Rugrats character was it?

Indeed, to keep the cutouts from falling over during CITV, it’s rumoured they were weighed down to the floor using old 1” tapes from recently defunct ITV archives. Under Hey Arnold was Series 2, Episode 4 of Catchphrase, and the first few episodes of Fraggle Rock were attached to the feet of Pikachu.

Sadly this forum didn’t know at the time as otherwise we could have all invaded the studio live on air and rescued the tapes as a confused Stephen Mulhern tries to introduce Art Attack.

That had actually been the case since I believe the 1998 relaunch, as they had to cobble together a set of some sorts to enable in-vision presentation. It was actually quite small, but as time went on it became bigger. I think it ultimately ended up as being one of the largest sets CITV had ever had in the history of its time on ITV, before it was all junked and went out of vision and ultimately up to Manchester.

I believe it started in 98' in another area but then moved opposite Central News in January 2000 with a big set with multiple areas. That lasted until Sept 03 when we had the white much more basic looking set which lasted about a year before going out of vision.