Holly and Stephen's Saturday Showdown

Check out the full colour, constantly animating CiTV/MoM DOG on this episode… which apparently freezes during The Angry Beavers and then doesn’t survive past the first ad break!

In this episode they have yet another edit, the first part with the American voice and then the second part the English voice ‘Ministry OF Mayhem’ edit.

https://youtu.be/Jq4G7bibvBY

Wouldn't get away with this anymore RIP Mr Lee aka Vincent Wong.

Why did there change from Stephen to holly? half way during 2005?

It was pretty awful and distracting, not suprising it didn't last 5 minutes- literally!

That clip's reminded me of that god awful Tutenstein cartoon too, so awful even the UK version of Discovery Kids didn't show it even though it was one of their shows. Seemed to fit in with the "info-tainment" aspect they seemed to be taking on at first though.

For whatever reason they didn't take on Sabrina from where SM:TV left off, and we had to wait several months until they showed the rest of the final season. Though it was so dire it probably didn't really matter if they didn't show it at all.

Here is an example of how less energy there was in Saturday Showdown compared to MOM - and quite an obscure line-up of guests it has in this clip.

But there's a bigger problem here, children's TV was sometimes seen as a training ground for "grown up" prime time TV but as that's non existent on ITV, where is the next gen of presenters going to come from when the same pool of about 5 presenters used for all their big shows either retire or fall into bad news.

Well many of that pool didn't start out on CITV even now, so I don't think it will be a problem, and its hardly a way to run a business.

Maybe they should have kept Woolworths open as those saturday jobs in store were a way many kids got into employment.

It's a perfectly decent way to run a business. A relatively low cost operation which nurtures new talent (on and off camera) that then go on to generate many millions in revenue in a more high profile part of the schedule.

There's also an argument for the benefits on society of keeping a business like Woolworths open, but that's not for here.

You could just let someone else worry about that though and employ them when they've already cut their teeth, whether that is a digital channel, radio, the stand up comedy circuit, CBBC...

Take Iain Stirling as a recent example.

I never said it was compulsory. Just saying it could be seen as a good training ground which could ultimately help them in the future.

Am I mistaken or didn't they briefly try an animated DOG during SM:TV as well? (the sunburst logo)

Also gotta love it when Bands come onto a kids show, but don't even try to get into the spirit of things. The guest band of the week just mills around in the background trying to look cool and not like they plan to have any of this kids show melarkey