Grade: no future for kids' programmes on ITV1


Chris TryhornTuesday March 13, 2007

MediaGuardian.co.uk

http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,,2033021,00.html



This story is about the main ITV channel- (ITV1) not showing any children's TV programmes as the broadcaster's executive Michael Grade said: "In terms of the valuable air time on a main network like ITV1, maintaining a loss-leading service for children seems to be unlikely to be sustained in the medium to long term." At the same time, the CITV, and BBC's childrens channels as well as others like Nick Junior and Junior Discovery are growing rapidly.


My Comments: I think this is a bad move for ITV because not only will they suffer through children watching the channel before and after school and giving in to the rivals BBC but it also means there would be less advertising revenue. If the children's programmes go, then so will the advertisements selling toys etc to children. It would have been thought that this would be one of the greatest times to advertise apart from peak time. However, "Ofcom launched a review of children's programming last month amid growing concern that the production of homegrown shows providing an alternative to the BBC was drying up" so they were kind of forced to do it.