Old Children's ITV programme

They used to show two programmes at lunchtime one at 12.00, the other at 12.10. This was until ITV daytime started in 1987, when I think they cut it back to one programme at 11.10. When This Morning started, they moved the programme back to 12.10 before phasing it out all together. When Children's ITV started in 1983, they repeated the 12.00 programme at 4.00pm with the exception of one of the days when Rainbow was shown - this was repeated later that afternoon.
Rainbow was shown twice weekly, so this is the " missing " Tuesday programme.

Although I remember Allsorts etc, I remember when the pattern was something like Let's Pretend on Monday, Rainbow on Tuesday / Friday, Our Backyard on Wednesday, Get Up and Go! ( with Mooncat ) on Thursday. Rainbow's days used to be vary according to " era ". I also remember Once Upon A Time... on a Tuesday, and Stepping Stones on a Thursday.

Sorry can't remember this but I do remember that when ITV decided to drop lunchtimes, Channel 4 came in with a strand called " Just 4 Fun " every lunchtime. ( This conincided with the launch of the shortlived Open College ). The only two facts I can remember was that Pob was moved into this strand, and there was a programme with signing called " Hand in Hand ".

So when did they get rid of the midday show? I'm sure it was still going in 1993 as I remember watching 'Playbox' before I went to nursery. One of my earliest TV memories is expecting it to be on, but some political thing being on instead, probably the Budget or something.

Not sure when they got rid of it. I think the C4 strand only lasted while ITV showed their programmes at 11.10am

Actually going back to 1993, this would have been the start of Tots TV, Wizadora etc - were these shown at lunchtime?

That brings back memories, I used to watch this when I was at infant school in the 80's. I notice that the Executive Producer is David Liddement - who also seemed to be the Executive Producer for half of Granada's output at that time. Was he on contract to fulfill this role or something?

I remember that the first series of Wizadora, and the first couple of series of Tots TV were 20 minutes long at dinner time. The following series were the 10 minute episodes that went out on CITV in an earlier slot, I think they started at 3.30, didn't they, and wasn't this around the time that CITV went out of vision?
The 10 minute programmes did muck around with programmes like Tots TV that had editions where they either left the cottage or stayed there, as opposed to the 20 minute when they used to 'explore' and then return to their cottage (as I type I'm realising how sad this is!).

Tots TV and Wizadora launched with the ITV franchise switchover in 1993 (not sure about Tots TV but Wizadora was made by Meridian) which makes sense. Rainbow finished along with Thames TV in 1992 and Allsorts was rebranded 'Gigglish Allsorts' with Emmerdale's Jane Cox and the talking box.

Tots TV was Central. They did do a new series of Rainbow, but it was called Rainbow Days and it was ****.

ISTR that that programme was made by HTV wasn't it?

And did my mind deceive me (I could have dreamt all this of course) but didn't Geoffrey Hayes and the original voice cast end up presenting a very similar show early in the morning with different puppets?

Why didn't the two just get together? Was there a licencing issue or something?

The last time the 12.10pm slot was used for Childrens ITV, was Friday 1st September 1993, from the Monday the 20 minutes was given to the afternoons and CITV was brought foward to 3.30pm.

The 12.10pm slot was nice, as it was never branded as CITV, so for us watching Granada we always got a cosy in-vision announcement before and after the programmes.

I remember feeling disappointed when seeing Tots TV and Wizadora for the first time at Lunchtimes, as they replaced Rosie & Jim (for the time being) and Rainbow, so it was a bit of a let down.

Channel 4 always used to show Sesame Street at lunchtimes, usually 1.00pm, as was Childrens BBC2.

Meanwhile on BBC1 it was Daytime Live/Pebble Mill with Alan Titchmarsh and Judi Spiers (only thing that wasn't children's related at the time, amazing isn't it).