CiTV & Ministry of Mayhem thread

One flaw:

Regardless of whether Nickelodeon has anything to do with this new strand or not, why would ITV want to be seen promoting what is essentially the competition for its children's slot? That's just even more of an excuse to cut the service back even further on the way citing "falling viewership" as the reason. Cross promoting the CiTV Channel (or ITV Kids if you will) would be a better use of resources, assuming the damn thing ever gets going.



And my above point in reverse - why on earth would Nickelodeon want to send its viewers to a mainstream channel regardless of its activities on said mainstream network when it's practically the first thing they see on the way to Nickelodeon?



It's just you, plus why would they want to do a "CiTV plc" anyway?

True. I loved the 1998-99 era, as it was different, and because not many were watching they could try whatever they wanted, some things worked, some things didn't.

I agree that a big push would have been great for the show.
I dont think that they should have relaunched in March (and those titles did nothing to help them!). They should have discussed things, perhaps have the summer off.

I'm not a fan of them getting rid of something if there's still life.
One of the options that they could have taken was to end it in May, to have a new show (possibly MoM) come in and do a few months over the summer, and then if they can't get anything to work, they would have still had SM:tv to correct.

I think that Des & Stephen got on really well, elements like Ghost Busted gave the show something that there hadn't been for a while.

But now that they have MoM, the only thing that they can do is to make it better, else they'll end up doing like Channel 4 did to their breakfast strand and end up by keep axing programmes just for the fact that they don't match one long running programme.
The key is to turn a programme into it's own - perhaps with elements of it's predessor), and not to rush the show along and have it off air.

Just look at what happened with the first RI:SE! The show became it's own, and when it was starting to become a well rounded programme, they told them to change it, and it became a bad clone of the Big Breakfast.

Thus why I prefer the CiTV plc - I don't even know what it involved, but I still don't see how another Children's Channel can run CiTV.

I'd prefer it to be run by an independant company as it did during the 90's through Stonewall productions. Surely this would make more sense?

And with them not having a studio to use in Birmingham, they could either take it elsewhere or to London.

They could have made ITV a split-show thing as well, like the BBC did with TSS (though they cut it down a lot sadly) which rotates with Dick & Dom. I guess there's still chance for them to do this at the end of 2005 if MoM is still under performing, not to axe it, but put it on rotation- which they should have done in the first place. Maybe then MoM could have stuck with their own ideas, as SM:TV could have been doing the job for a few months of the year.

I like the idea of CiTV Plc but there is TOO! much mergers' taking place.

Indeed! A summer fill in when the BBC takes there's may be a good idea for ITV to bring back. Not only will it give viewers a change every now and then, but it will also give the whole production team a break to work on new ideas.

I think that the Foundations programmes, especially Globoloco are incredibly creative yet Ministry of Mayhem has a couple of ideas and plods along each week. Though the actual ablibbing on the show has improved three fold since it began, and I don't believe that it is too scripted nowadays, even though it would be nice to let them flow, they need some basis. It would be nice to have a programme where anything can go! Though I presume that they don't actually have a proper script on da bungalow, just items to link to and things to say.

From the impression that I got, I'd presumed that it would have meant them creating a CiTV company rather than a strand, which wouldn't be a bad idea to let a group of well known producers and heads of childrens channels either still working or who are now out of work taking over the CiTV name.

Not only could it then be a section on ITV1 but could try out it's own things on it's own channel.
It would also not only be responsible for commissioning but could also be a production company.
Perhaps taking over a building, say an old cinema and turning it into it's own studios that could be hired out by independants and create revenue for ITV that could work in the long run.

Even though producers are leaving studios mainstream, childrens TV is most definately in studios, thus the majority of Studios taken up at BBC TVC on Friday by CBBC. They had...
CBBC One (TC10)
CBBC Channel, (TC9)
X Change (TC2)
Dick & Dom (TC6)
Newsround (TC7)
Top Of the Pops Saturday (TC3?)
and Blue Peter was in the BP Garden, else they would have had another studio.

But then again, I doubt that the Nick deal will last forever, and I'm still not sure what good it will do, but they can always reconsider things in a few years, when ITV may be run by somebody different!

How many posts in a row??

Anyway, whilst visiting websites I came across TV History. And within it's weekender section here they have the Ministry of Mayhem titles from the Very first show, back on January 10th 2004.

It contains the full, and yes, that's full titles before anyone started to edit them down, and the full, yes full verse within the music.
Plus it's original music where it sounds like Ministry Mayhem, before they re recorded to add the 'OF'.

For the second show the music had the full verse still, yet the verse was sung by someone different making it sound American (very strange).

Plus within this you get to see the lovely big bright set (that I believe still had potential, and looked more saturday mornings, and massive!), with many characters, including random kids and crew members dressed up, plus the twins in their original costumes and wigs!
And it's before the menu started to appear within the music (this came from ep 2), and so therefore has 5, yes 5 'Na, na, na. Na, na, na hhhho's.

It was a lot better as they panned to many cameras, and because there were alot of people dancing it was nicer than everyone doing their own thing (as Stephen, Michael & Holly did for ep 2, though it did involve Stephen in a very energetic spin and a high leg kick, so it wasn't all bad!)

And if you do go and view it and wonder where the audience are, they are on the audience tier in the rear left corner of the studio.

*havent read any of the thread apart from last couple of pages, so it might already have been said* ... but, who remembers cbbc on nickelodeon.

this alleged itv deal is just the reverse of that, so nothing new.

I don't remember this. How did it work? what sort of programmes were featured? Did they use CBBC presenters, studio and idents?

It was certainly still going when I got Nick in Feb 99. I recall it featured a large puppet sitting in the studio (or at least one that looked like it) who introduced a few programmes. The title sequence featured kids painting the screen orange.

1999, puppet, could it have been Emlyn the Gremlin - the replacement for Otis the Aardvark?

Strange that they didn't use the CBBC pres though.