CITV

CITV (standing for Children's ITV) was a British children's brand of ITV plc, a free-to-air television channel, and the name of programming blocks on the ITV network and ITV2. CITV launched on 29 December 1980 as Watch It!, then later rebranded on 3 January 1983 as Children's ITV, as a late afternoon programming block on the ITV network for children aged 6 to 12. It replaced the earlier Watch It! branding and introduced networked in-vision continuity links between programmes. These links were originally pre-recorded from a small London studio until 1987, when Central won the contract to produce live links from their Birmingham studios. In 2004, presentation of CITV was relocated to Granada Television in Manchester, which saw the block's in-vision continuity being discontinued. In 2013, the operations moved to ITV Granada's MediaCityUK studios in Salford. In 2006, CITV launched as a digital channel on Freeview. The channel primarily ran repeated ITV content and acquisitions daily from 6am to 9pm. Following the removal of its original afternoon slot in late 2006, a CITV programming block on the ITV network continued to air on weekend mornings from 6am to 9:25am as part of the ITV Breakfast time slot. CITV did not have a +1 simulcast, unlike the rest of ITV's portfolio of channels, and was only simulcast in HD on Sky Glass. On 22 July 2023, ITV launched a new children's hub on the ITVX streaming service, ITVX Kids, as an eventual replacement for the CITV channel. At 9pm on 1 September 2023, the channel closed with a promotional loop informing viewers of the move to ITVX. On 2 September 2023, the children's block was moved to feature every morning on ITV2 during breakfast time, from 5am to 9am (later shortened). Shows broadcast and promoted during the block were sourced from...