ITV Programming Thread

Hand sanitizer won't get that out.

New CITV shows have been revaled for this year, working with the gorverment-funded YACF.

Don’t Unleash the Beast, produced by Tiny House Productions and CPL Productions, a Red Arrow Studios company, is an ambitious game show set in a mythological underground world where a team of three treasure seekers undergo a series of challenges in order to find an ancient lost treasure. One tiny snag… a ferocious and foul Beast is guarding the treasure — make a wrong move and all his might is unleashed! Each game will test the participants in areas of problem solving, skill, physical prowess, teamwork, communication and knowledge. The show will promote healthy attitudes towards competition, physical activity and working together.
Dot to Dot Production’s arts and crafts series Makeaway Takeaway, a brand-new comedy art and craft series for 6-12 year olds, encouraging creativity, through arts, crafts and making, with an emphasis on sustainability through recycling, reusing, upcycling and reclaimed materials. Presented by artist and comedian Bec Hill, each week, Bec will take the audience and her ‘takeaway’ customers on a comical journey packed with unique and inspirational art ideas, as she experiments with unusual materials, finds a home for junk, and uses her funny bones to make us laugh along the way.
Aardman’s animated sitcom for 5-11 year olds, Lloyd of the Flies, mirrors contemporary life for children and families across the UK. It is estimated that there are some 10 quintillion (10,000,000,000,000,000,000) individual insects alive at any one time. This is a story about one; Lloyd B Fly is a housefly and middle child of 453. He lives with his parents, little sister PB and their 225 maggot siblings in the rotting apple they call home, located in a quiet suburban fruit bowl. The series offers a fresh British sense of humour, giving a sense of what it’s like living in a UK based family dynamic, from the point of view of a young teenage boy.
Paul Mortimer, CITV, said:

“The YACF has been immensely supportive of UK producers in the Indie sector. The partnerships that this new funding model has enabled have brought UK creativity amongst content makers for young audiences to the fore, greatly benefiting CITV and others. The latest CITV commissions announced today enrich our output with new British series in multi genres across live action and animation.”


Also, The Rubbish World of Dave Spud and ITV Signpost's Dare Master will both be returning for their second series this autumn but is not funded by the YACF.

Going off topic slightly but good to see they're funding content on C4 and E4 too, as well as Milkshake. A shame children's TV needs supporting in this way but new original content is a good thing, and I'm sure the government hope it'll be a leg up to generating funding for more new content which funds itself.

It went downhill after ITV closed it's in-house children's production and it didn't help when HFSS advertising was banned either. The budget has been very low for commercial children's programming for the last decade or so. CITV has not even gone live since 2012 and American imports are starting to take over. I am sad that the new generation wont grow up with shows like Art Attack, My Parents are Aliens or SM:tv Live. Scrambled! is basically like continuity links rather than saturday-morning kids show. Saturday-Mash Up is a bit better but can be too 'in your face' and annoying sometimes. But anyway, I am out of their demographic so maybe some younger people might like it.

CITV did do Thunderbirds are Go! which lasted three series and that was a big investment.

And was a really good show. Don't forget they tried showing it on the main channel for a while, it was clearly meant to be family viewing and not just for kids.

I know that the first episode was premiered on ITV on a Saturday evening, but wasn’t it just the launch episode with other airings on the main channel in the weekend morning pre 9:25 CITV/Scrambled slot?

I don't think CITV really spent that much money to help with TAG, since some of the scenes in the show look like they would never happen on CITV's budget. They probably got help from Pukeko Pictures. ITV have said they have increased CITV's budget by 10% this year and that's good but I would also like if they also paid attention to LittleBe, maybe they could include it in the fund.

I suspect ITV Studios saw Thunderbirds are Go! as a potential money spinner in terms of merchandise rather than ratings which is the case for many animated TV series but also they could sell globally as a refreshed IP which you couldn't do with the original series without cutting it to shreds.

The first episode premiered on ITV before CITV. Then I think after that the were shown on Scrambled! (simulcast with both channels) with repeats on a weekend afternoon on ITV only. They did this until the end of series 2. After that, new episodes premiered on the Scrambled! block during the 8am time slot with repeats on weekdays on the CITV channel around the 6pm slot. A bit confusing, sorry.

That probably is why, they seem to be doing the same thing with Robozuna.

The notable thing with Thunderbirds was how heavily promoted it was, and as a CITV show rather than ITV. It was arguably more important for ITV to inform it's viewers they were commissioning high quality animated content than it was for viewers to watch it. I suspect resales more than merchandise opportunities were the driver.

It would be so interesting to see stats on how much original childrens content is commissioned nowadays on the commercial side at least.