ITV1 has been given permission to reduce the amount of hours it dedicates to children's and religious programmes.
Media regulator Ofcom granted the reduction in public service broadcasting because of the choice of programmes available on other channels.
ITV1 applied for the reduction to allow it to boost ad revenues and cut costs.
The network now has to provide a minimum of eight hours of children's programmes a week and one hour of religious output.
Channel 4 and Five are both required to offer only one hour of religious programming each.
Across the board
Despite the drop Ofcom said ITV1 was still "committed to the maintenance of high quality religious factual programmes, including acts of worship shown in full".
In allowing the change to the amount of children's programming, Ofcom took into account the proliferation of digital channels that catered solely for young audiences.
"Even though it might be reduced by an hour or two on ITV, across the board it remains basically the same," said an Ofcom spokesman said.
Considering the amount of kids channels available it's a sensible choice. When I was young and without dozens of kid channels ITV only offered an hour of kids programmes a day - and I guess it'll go back to that. Remember GMTV also have kids programmes at the weekend.
Therefore, with the Lunchtime News extending to an hour, ITV may introduce a daytime block of programmes from 1.30pm - 4pm, with CITV for an hour at 4pm - plus 2 hrs on Saturday (M.o.M.) and an hour on Sunday mornings. Then again, OFCOM class CD:UK as a kids show as they have no youth category.
Religious programmes are no great loss either - it's a sensible decision. As a non-religious man I can't stand the traditional services telling us God is responsible for all the good in the world - but won't take responsibility for the bad!
I'm much more inclined to watch programmes which question beliefs or about how religion affects issues and attitudes (e.g. Holy Offensive, Derren Brown's Messiah etc).
I hope this sees an end to the dull Sunday morning programmes. The majority of CiTV shows are repeats anyways. Surprised that some of their programmes tapes aint worn out by too much repeats.
I'll try and do the weekend kids shows not counting CD:uk as a kids show and keeping MoM at 2 hours and 5 minuites[incl. breaks!]:
Saturdays:
10.00 MoM
12.05-1.00 CD:uk
Sundays:
9.00 Toonattik [Two eps of Recess]
9.25 CiTV
But sundays in Channel land would be:
9.00 Toonattik[One ep of Recess]
9.10 Puffin's Pla[i]ce[then back to ITV1 for CiTV]
I don't know what to put before mom though!
I'm fed up with the 9.25-11.30 slot because i like saturday morning shows to last till or past 12.
I think CD:UK would be better if they shot all the audience before they started. It's embarressing watching Cat trying to have an intelligent conversation with someone from McFly (who look relieved to not be being patronised as they would on Top Of The Pops Saturday) and then the stupid girls scream
I'm not sure I agree with these cuts, especially to children's. I wouldn't say that the current 12 hours a week (just under) is too much for them.
It most probably will end up at them just giving an hour a day to children, which would most probably mean the axing of tots programmes.
It would also mean that childrens programmes on itv would be at it's lowest in my lifetime, even though they were only on from 3:50-5:10 in the afternoon when I was first around, they also had the lunchtime 20 minute slot.
And I don't buy what Ofcom are saying.
The fact is that at the moment everybody isn't watching digital. And when that day when everybody is comes, the majority of people will be watching via freeview, where correct me if I'm wrong, the only children's services on there are the ones from the BBC (aka CBBC and CBeebies).
So they're basically telling letting ITV put out less children's programming in the hope that more people will pick up digital to watch the BBC, so that the viewership can justify the spending of the license fee.
Unless of course ITV will now go and launch a children's channel in the hope that the lack of it on ITV1 will mean that people will go looking for programmes on a channel, especially if preview programmes within the hour that they will have to use.
Chances are though that they won't and by the autumn all we'll get is an hour of Spongebob, Mr Bean and My Parents Are Aliens!
It probably will mean axing the tots programmes because lets face it, who is going to tune in for 10 mins on ITV1 when there is CBeebies and Nick Jr providing tots programming all day.
CBeebies on One is practically a 20 min advert for the CBeebies channel so I'd expect that to go in a few years. BBC still have that moral obligation to provide programming for non-digital viewers, but when the number of people with digital increases I'd expect children's to leave BBC1 as well, we've already seen reductions during the school holidays. It's just that ITV are doing it quicker
The highest rating kids shows on BBC1 and ITV1 only get half a million viewers so really its just another consequence of the digital era. I don't like it but's just a fact really
I can't really say much that hasn't been said, but what are they going to put in place of the minutes of CiTV they take away!? More pointless make-over shows which have been repeated 5 times!? Which will probably draw LESS viewers than repeats of CiTV shows?
The only way I can really see the shorter CiTV working is to axe the tots shows and show different programmes on each day on CiTV, like they did at the begining of the year at 4.00:
Monday: Atomic Betty & Worst Witch
Tuesday: Play the Game & Barking! (I think )
I'd carry on but the only other day I can remember the shedule for is Friday: Globo Loco & Giblit Boys
But I suppose we will see what they do when it happens....
)