CITV at Gas Street

I saw a kiosk/booth today at a aquarium gift shop called "KidsTV", where you put in £1 in the slot and go into the booth to watch clips/full episodes(?) of Postman Pat: SDS, The Basil Brush Show, Finley the Fire Engine and Rupert Bear: Follow the Magic. Kids today wouldn't recognize half of these shows (execpt Postman Pat). Since when kids will remember Finley the Fire Engine?!

Does Rupert Bear even appear any where outside of the comic strip in the Daily Express?

Finley, according to the Wiki article was on CBeebies as late as 2012, though it apparently dates from 2001.

He did have a cartoon produced by Nelvana that aired on CITV then Tiny Pop and a stop-motion series on Milkshake.

Little off-topic, but Rupert also turned up on CBeebies for about a week in 2003: https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/search/0/20?order=asc&q=Rupert&svc=9371512#search
Is this one of the only characters broadcast on the BBC, ITV and Channel 5?

That CiTV Rupert animation had wonderful music - that was very much “my” iteration of Rupert the Bear. Just check out this theme tune:



Mind you, this one was still being repeated on CBBC at the same time IIRC:

Not forgetting the original 1970s series.



and the Frog Song film

The BBC version of Rupert was repeated to death for 12 years, 13 if you include the BBC Choice showings and in fact outlived the (I think there was a gap of a decade-ish before it randomly turned up on the CITV channel in 2008) repeats of the CITV series of Rupert if I recall. And then it showed up on CBeebies for a final hurrah in 2003 after three years of absence from schedules as pointed out earlier in the thread.

Was incredibly strange to have CBBC showing a version of Rupert that was just a narrator talking over still pictures when you had CITV showing a full animantion version at the same time. The CBBC version really felt badly inferior to me at the time.

He has an annual every year.

Finley last aired in November 2012 according to Wikipedia. I'm sure those shows would've all been current when the booth was set up - I would say it dates from 2009. That's two years after Finley started, two years after Basil ended, and a year after Rupert ended and Pat SDS started.

I remember going into a booth like that in the early 90s, can't remember what was in it now though, but I remember it ate our money.

The late 80s/90s a golden period for kids tv, coming back from school to see wonderfully crafted programmes from citv/bbc, then Home and Away and Neighbours, Going Live, Motormouth, Ghost Train, it was too good.

Summer telly with Ox Tales, Vicky the Vicking, fantastic

It was legitimately the best. Without going too off-topic, I'm quite grateful to have grown up in that landscape. Foregoing any Rose-tinted spectacles, there was something quite lovely about the internet being in its infancy and having such quality TV as a primary entertainment source. I've just ordered The Demon Headmaster on DVD, having finally been released in its entirety almost two decades after it last aired (now I feel old)!