The CBBC Thread

TMi lost something special about it when Caroline left, so hopefully the new slot and revised format will do it good. I think they should bring in a new female though, even if its bringing back Ayesha who presented 'Level Up' with them a few years back.

Heard whispers that Chris will be pushed to become the face of CBBC when it moves to Salford next year and thats part of the reason he was hired, because Salford is where he is from.

I think that Newsround's 5pm bulletin has lately, been very good. The biggest improvement by a mile has been the edition of another presetner so it is now double-headed. Now, Newsround has a real falgship bulletin. Although I have some gripes over the branding, the show is very consistent, fluid and easy to watch!

I see TMi's wikipedia page has been cleaned up after it got vandalised! Someone seemed to think bands like Muse had appeared on the show!

A while ago I did wonder if come DSO, BBC Three would get its own stream on Freeview (and become a 24 hour channel), and CBBC on another stream would run until around 9pm, with something else in its place e.g. Community 9pm to 7am. Evening programming (6pm to 9pm) would then be for the teen/pre-teen kids.

Now BBC only has one Freeview SD mux that won't be possible. With the current set-up (CBBC and BBC Three sharing a stream), extending CBBC to 9pm would mean BBC Three being unable to start until 9pm. I think there's more need for BBC Three to start at 7pm than BBC Four, e.g. BBC Three shows the ESC Semi-finals 8pm to 10pm each May, and it also does Glastonbury Festival coverage. Therefore most likely, they could re-arrange the streams as follows:

CBBC / BBC Four timeshare - CBBC 7am to 9pm; BBC Four 9pm to 7am
CBeebies / BBC Three timeshare - CBeebies 6am to 7pm; BBC Three 7pm to 6am

BBC Three currently shuts about 4am and shows a caption it loses the stream to CBBC, which then transmits half hour's worth of a rolling trailer. Likewise BBC Four broadcasts a caption from around 4am until it loses the stream to CBeebies around 5:30am, which itself broadcasts a rolling trailer until 6am.

Under the suggested stream arrangement, CBBC and CBeebies could ditch those pre-opening trailers. That way, BBC Three could show programmes (not a caption) until 5:58am when CBeebies takes over the stream, and immediately shows its first programme of the day e.g. Tikkabilla, and BBC Four could show programmes until 6:58am when CBBC takes over the stream and immediately shows its first programme of the day.

They only show trailers for filler - it isn't some sort of thing both channels bidded for. It fills the space cheaply, rather than paying for programmes.

Yesterday evening just before 7pm I spotted a subtle change to CBeebies presentation, an extended version of the Goodnight Song, with two presenters singing it. I watched it again this evening, and it was exactly the same as last night - for good measure I recorded it to add to my ident/pres collection. The extended version goes like this:

The time has come to say goodnight,
To say sleep tight till the morning light.
The time has come to say goodnight,
It's the end of a lovely day.

The time has come to say goodnight,
To say sleep tight till the morning light.
The time has come to say goodnight,
It's the end of a lovely day.

We've had so much fun today,
Tomorrow's just a dream away.
And now it's time to say goodnight,
At the end of a lovely day.

... whereas previously it was just this:

The time has come to say goodnight,
To say sleep tight till the morning light.
The time has come to say goodnight,
It's the end of a lovely day.

We've had so much fun today,
Tomorrow's just a dream away.
And now it's time to say goodnight,
At the end of a lovely day.

It must have been only very recently Auntie decided to extend it in this way. Does anyone know the reason for the change?

The "Night Night" slide is still green, a long time ago now it changed from pink to green for some mysterious reason.

Do you have children tumble tower?

Do you really need to ask?

No, I'm just pres spotting. Just like last Christmas I set my HDD/DVD recorder to record programme junctions off Virgin 1 to see what Christmas idents they were doing (if at all). I wasn't in the least bit interested in the programmes on Virgin 1.

Likewise last Christmas, I recorded for about 3 hours off CBeebies to see what Christmas idents etc appeared between the programmes - I wasn't in the least bit interested in Tikkabilla, Teletubbies, Tweenies etc, all I was interested in was the bits between them. That said, whilst scanning through, I spotted some familiar buildings around a harbour (pavilion etc) in an edition of "Something Special" I managed to get and took a closer look; as I thought it was indeed Weymouth Harbour.

In order to monitor and record pres across the eight standard definition BBC channels, I need to monitor CBBC and CBeebies, as well as BBC One and BBC Two. Discussing CBeebies presentation (or indeed that on Nickelodeon, Nick Jr, and the loads of other kids' channels on Sky) here should be as acceptable as discussing idents on BBC One, ITV1, Channel 4, Five, Sky 1/2/3 etc.

and it is, but you need to be careful not to end up discussing with yourself. You didn't need to write out an entire song from CBeebies, just mentioning that the song had some new verses would have done unless someone asked you to type them all out.

Two things:

1. Anyone know why Swap Shop has shifted to the CBBC channel as of this week? Seems a bit of a demotion given nothing much is happening on BBC Two instead...

2. Dick and Dom are presenting in the "office" this week, must make them the longest serving CBBC continuity presenters ever! Think Richard began in Studio A back in 1996, Dominic not long after, then after a couple of years away both returned with the relaunch in 2002 before concentrating on Da Bungalow from 2003 onwards. And now they seem to be back again, although perhaps only for a week!

Officially, to promote viewing of the CBBC channel in that time slot.

Realistically? Perhaps because it's a ratings failure.