By Charlie Herbert
Farewell to a legend
Kids TV channel CITV will close next month after three decades on the air.
The channel – loved for shows such as Danger Mouse, My Parents Are Aliens and Jungle Run – will be making way for ITVX Kids, which launched earlier this month.
This is ITV’s new children’s service on their streaming platform ITVX.
CITV will close on September 1 at 9pm to make way for the streaming platform, which offers “more content than ever across a range of titles appealing to both school age and pre-school age children”.
In a statement, ITV said: “As a consequence of this new streaming approach and responding to the changing ways children and their parents are increasingly accessing content, the CITV broadcast channel will close after the summer holidays on 1st September.”
Children’s ITV was launched in 1983, with the digital CITV channel, aimed at kids aged five to 12, arriving in 2006.
Over the years, the channel has spawned iconic shows such as My Parents Are Aliens, The Worst Witch, Art Attack, Danger Mouse and Horrid Henry.
This is along with shows aimed at younger children such as Rainbow and Rosie and Jim.
Reacting to the news of CITV’s closure, Michael Underwood, the host of Jungle Run, wrote on X: “So #CITV is closing on 1st Sept. I suppose it was inevitable, but that doesn’t make it any less sad. I had so many memorable moments on
“@ChildrensITV and was fortunate enough to present on the legendary #JungleRun. It was easily one the best experiences I had on children’s TV.”
Some children’s TV will still be shown on ITV channels, whilst some original CITV series, such as The Rubbish World of Dave Spud will continue to be created and aired, the
Guardian reports.
The move comes as channels react to the changing viewing habits of British kids and the competition of streaming platforms such as Netflix.
In fact, ITV goes as far to say that young people have “given up” on watching scheduled TV, with the average time spent by a British child watching children’s TV channel falling by 69 percent.
Last year, the BBC confirmed plans to shut down its kids TV channel, CBBC, and move it to an online-only service.
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