CiTV & Ministry of Mayhem thread

A very good strong and valid point, though CiTV has got away with no IVC before I still think it more than presentation at times, when they just used Steve Ryde and the animations, people weren't too bothered as we knew where we stood with CiTV and we knew what programmes were on etc, we also knew that we would get the same animations too. But now as you said it is a disgrace, CiTV cannot make up their mind, sometimes they have IVC, sometimes they don't, it is just getting annoying, same with their programme schedule, don't get me wrong MPAA is a popular programme, but is there any need to show it every other day?

Granted CiTV might not be such a profitable part of the ITV Network and ITV PLC as it used to, but still the way how things are going on at the minute is just pathetic, they cannot make up their minds, random idents are just used with very little effort in them and the announcements that compliment them. Obviously ITV need to make cutbacks in order to survive, but I personally believe they are hitting CiTV very hard, there's not much variety in the schedule these days.

As you said even Five can provide something from a broom cupboard, so can Disney and Nickelodeon which only get something like 100,000 viewers! Isn't there any other room at Granada, YTV or LWT? Yes, there's no room at Central now, but they've had the summer to sort themselves out, they do it without explaination, one day it's one thing, the next it can be something completly different!

This is just a repeat of what happened in 1993 when they also decided to scrap in vision continuity. Although that lasted for the best part of five years, surely this one isn't going to last that long? Perhaps its temporary and yes it's probably cheaper to go out of vision.



If Allen has his way, we probably never will. I'm pretty much convinced that Mr Allen would scrap the entire CiTV output on ITV1 full stop if he could get away with it.



Has it been decided yet where CiTV is going when Nottingham news comes to Birmingham?

It was done for different reasons in 1993. For starters as part of the CiTV contract there was a set ammount of 'high quality trailers' (source: Watched It), so going out of vision made it easy to forfill this part and of course it's always been cheaper to do stuff OOV. I should imagine they wanted to move themselves on from the Tommy Boyd era - not the most successful period.

This time round they've had very little choices with being forced out of the studio they were using, but I don't think that means they've had no choice at all. I'm still not sure why the CSO studio isn't avalible to them. Presumably Central East's bullitiens will come from their main studio so why couldn't West's? It's not as if they'd have to get rid of the CSO equipment - a virtual set wouldn't have been the worst thing they could do. Even if there are good reasons why they couldn't use this option, it's just one.

They've chosen to do it the way they're doing it, but it doesn't look as if any effort has been put in. It's almost as if they've been told to keep CiTV running but not make any special effort. The graphics team are capable of more than that NXT/L8R slide - my biggest issue with that is the images, which are still - they should be clips, moving, it would make it much more lively.



I'm convinced that's why things are the way they are. As I said earlier in the thread ITV are keen to reduce the number of hours it has to broadcast Children's (Arts & Religous) programmes and I bet with the current state of CiTV, Offcom will agree to it.



I'm unsure of the answer to that but I would imagine things are as they will be for a time to come now. After Christmas is the earliest I can see any big changes happening, and I'm sceptical. I just hope that whoever made the recent Finger Tips promo and the current 'Life's Rubbish...' promo's get to do some other things, those have been quite remenisent of the old animations we used to get - only downside is there only seems to be a few.

It can't all be blamed on the head of CiTV.
As I can see it now, the head is only responsible for commissioning programmes.
Everything to do with presentation is down to the CiTV team at Birmingham. So if they want out of vision, there's nothing else that can happen.

At the moment Central west are still using the reception area and using the virtual studio in the day.
Even if it's just a small studio, one or two presenters sitting on a sofa, perhaps leave it virtual reality would be better than currently.

I agree about the graphics.
What's happened? They used to have a team that produced amazing graphics, even if it was just for the start of the year, they were still great.
They can manage to do animation things with Little CiTV, but it's as though they can't be bothered anywhere else.

To me as a child the 1993 presentation wasn't that bad.
Mainly because a lot of effort was put into it. They created characters for Steve Ryde to voice, they even had menus for the day, they haven't had them for ages now, even in vision.

Out of Vision may be cheaper, but as that 'watched it' article said about 93-98, ratings may well fall again.
I don't see how it benefits though.
An independant production company could do better, give them a set amount of time and tell them to show the new CITV shows, they could leave out repeats and use the time for live links.

Why don't CiTV see it?

Also Charles Allen mentioned that a childrens channel would be joint with an american channel.
Yet all of the major childrens channels in america already have their own channels in the UK, so what would be the advantage for them to take ratings away from their own UK channels? Very Strange indeed!

I personally think they should do a Studio Disney with a lovely looking Studio, a few Presenters and loads of Games & Sketches in between shows.

Anyone with me?

Just been looking back at this post James...the SM:TV brand returning? hmm...**coughs**Nickeoldeon 2005**coughs**

What do you mean?

I caught the end of Dora the Explorer this afternoon and this show already has credits at the right hand side, the left being taken up by some visual game. So when CITV did their squash the credits moved totally off the screen and we were left with some mostly static picture, they might as well have just not bothered and shown the trailers full screen.

A bit later on there was a Rubix clue style CITV animation which was ok.

Later, or should I say L8R, the voiceover man did the NXT/L8R slide in the style of Jim Bowen from Bullseye! LOL!

Can't say any more - sorry! Work it out though...

I noticed that, last night in my post I included a bit that said he hadn't been doing many voices appart from that loud shouty voice he does at the end of CiTV but I edited that today as I thought it was a bit unfair after that.

I almost certinally have. As pointed back earlier in this thread, Nickelodeon Down Under have a show called SN:TV, which is a remake of SM:TV- my guess is that Nick UK will be launching a version of this.

Maybe.....