ITV announces closure of CITV

ITV has announced the planned closure of its dedicated children’s channel CITV.

The channel was launched in 2006 after the success of the Children’s ITV programming block, which launched on ITV in 1983 as dedicated late afternoon programming for children aged between five and 13.

On Friday, the broadcaster announced the CITV channel is set to close in early autumn after the launch of a new “dedicated destination for kids” on its streaming service ITVX.

The new service, ITVX Kids, is due to launch in the July 2023 and will be rolled out during the UK school summer holiday period with a range of titles aimed at both school-age and pre-school-age children.

ITVX launched in December last year to replace the ITV Hub brand as the online home of all ITV content as the broadcaster attempts to compete with streaming giants such as Netflix and Amazon.

Despite the closure of CITV, ITV has said it plans to maintain the LittleBe preschool segment on ITVBe and will also offer some early morning children’s content on ITV2 from September.

The ITVX Kids homepage will be accessible within a child-safe ITVX Kids profile and offer more than 1,000 hours of programming, according to ITV.

The broadcaster has also said accessibility for young viewers is “a big priority”.

ITV said the “ambition” is for all ITVX Kids content to be subtitled, with 20% of the content offering audio description.

The new offering will also include British Sign Language original programming such as Mission Employable and Dare Master.

Source: ITV