From the anarchic to the educational, British children once enjoyed a golden age of children’s television. On CBBC and CITV, there was no shortage of thrilling gameshows, mischievous puppets, imaginative storylines – and, of course, gunge.
But over the past decade, kids’ TV has been in steady decline – spending by public broadcasters on original children’s programmes has fallen by 30% since 2013. Last year, the BBC announced that it would make its main children’s channel, CBBC, online only. And last Friday, ITV’s service, CITV, was shuttered and content moved to the ITVX streaming service. To get some perspective on the demise of kids’ programming, we asked the people behind some of the biggest and silliest kids’ TV shows what they think of children’s TV today.
