CBBC

**CBBC** (short for **Children's BBC** or **Children's British Broadcasting Corporation**, and sometimes referred to as the **CBBC Channel**) is a British free-to-air children's television channel operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation. Launching on 11 February 2002 as a spin-off from the BBC's children's strand of the same name, CBBC broadcasts for fourteen hours per-day from 7:00 am to 9:00 pm. CBBC is primarily aimed at viewers 6 to 16 years old; a sister channel, CBeebies, serves a younger audience. CBBC was named *Channel of the Year* at the Children's BAFTA awards in November 2008 and 2015. The channel averages 300,000 viewers daily.[1]

The channel originally shared bandwidth on the digital terrestrial television platform with BBC Choice,[2] and later BBC Three, needing that CBBC sign off at 7:00 p.m. daily. Beginning on 11 April 2016, following the closure of the linear BBC Three television service, CBBC extended its broadcast day by two hours.[3][4]On 22 August 2008, the BBC announced that the channel would be available live on its website from 16 September.[5] CBBC's reach further expanded with the addition of the channel on the Sky line-up in the Republic of Ireland on 12 May 2011.[6] The British Forces Broadcasting Service have provided younger viewers with CBBC and CBeebies since 1 April 2013 when they replaced BFBS Kids.

### History

The BBC has produced and broadcast television programmes for children since the 1930s. The first children-specific strand on BBC television was For the Children, first broadcast on what was then the single 'BBC Television Service' on Saturday 24 April 1937; it was only ten minutes long. It lasted for two years before being taken off air when the service closed due to the Second World War in September 1939.

Following the war, For the Children recommenced on Sunday 7 July 1946, with a twenty-minute slot every Sunday afternoon and the addition of programmes for pre-school children under the banner For The Very Young, and over the years they became an established feature of the early afternoons on the BBC's main channel BBC One.

In 1952, the "For the Children" / "For the Very Young" branding was dropped; older children's programmes (such as Blue Peter, which debuted in 1958) would now be introduced by regular announcers whilst younger children's programming was broadcast under the Watch with Mother banner. The 1964 launch of BBC Two allowed additional room for children's programming with an edition of Play School technically being the first official programme. On 1 October 1980, Watch with Mother was replaced by See-Saw, which was moved to BBC2 in June 1987, before ending in 1990.

Meanwhile, weekday afternoon children's programmes on BBC One were introduced by the usually off-screen continuity announcer, though often specially-designed menus and captions would be used.

On 9 September 1985, this long-standing block of children's programming was rebranded as Children's BBC, and for the first time the children's block had dedicated idents and an in-vision presenter. Previously the BBC had broadcast children's programming using BBC1's team of regular duty announcers. The launch presenter for this block, and thus the first Children's BBC presenter of the current format, was Phillip Schofield.

During the 1990s, Children's BBC began to be referred to informally on-air as 'CBBC' (this occurred at around the same time that ITV's rival service Children's ITV began to be referred to as CITV in a similar manner). The official billing name of Children's BBC remained in place, however, until the BBC's network-wide branding refresh of October 1997, when the official on-air branding changed to CBBC. (CITV officially adopted their short name in their own branding refresh the following year).

Further changes to the schedule were rolled out during the 1990s and 2000s, including the introduction in the late 1980s of Sunday morning programmes on BBC Two, initially only during the Open University's winter break and then subsequently year-round; the introduction of a regular weekday morning 'breakfast show' format, also on BBC Two; the relocation of the daytime pre-school slot to BBC Two, later returning to BBC One at the start of the afternoon block.

In the 1990s, BBC Scotland introduced Children's BBC Scotland with a mixture of repeats and local programming such as Megamag and Up for It! which was broadcast in the school holidays on BBC One Scotland and then subsequently on BBC Two Scotland. During this time, BBC Scotland opt out of the national presenters to broadcast their local version of the weekday morning breakfast show presented by Grant Stott and Gail Porter.

From 1996 to 1999, CBBC programmes were shown on the channel Nickelodeon, as part of the CBBC on Nick programming block.

The launch of digital channel BBC Choice in 1998 saw the channel broadcasting children's programming in a Saturday afternoon slot which was subsequently replaced by the daily 6 am to 7 pm service CBBC on Choice, which aired archive pre-school programming and was itself the precursor of the current CBBC Channel and CBeebies services.

In 2002, the launch of the CBBC Channel and the CBeebies Channel saw a wide variety of programmes, both new and archive, being shown again on the new channels from 6 am or 7 am until 7 pm.

In 2005, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, Tessa Jowell, was questioned in the House of Commons as to whether a public service broadcaster should really be broadcasting "lavatorial" humour.[3] Ms Jowell responded that it was the government's job to develop a charter for the BBC; and then the BBC's job to determine standards of taste, decency and appropriateness.

In 2009, a report published by the BBC Trust found that scheduling changes which took place in February 2008, where programming ended at 17:15, had led to a decrease in viewers.[4] This was especially noticeable for Blue Peter and Newsround, two of CBBC's flagship programmes; Blue Peter is now recording its lowest viewing numbers since it started in 1958, and Newsround now receives fewer than 100,000 viewers compared to 225,000 in 2007.[5][6] The changes were made following the BBC's loss of the rights to soap opera Neighbours, which had for many years been broadcast between the end of CBBC and the start of the 6 pm news; when the decision was made to move daytime editions of The Weakest Link from BBC Two to One to fill the gap, CBBC had to move to an earlier slot as Weakest Link was longer than Neighbours was.

As part of the Delivering Quality First proposals submitted by the BBC in October 2011 and approved by the BBC Trust in May 2012, all children's programming on BBC One and Two would be moved permanently to the CBBC and CBeebies channels following the digital switchover. It was found that the majority of child viewers watched the programmes on these channels already and that only 7% of these children watched CBBC programmes on BBC One and Two only.[7] Children's programming on BBC One ended on 21 December 2012 with the CBeebies' morning strand on BBC Two ending on 4 January 2013.[8]

In November 2015, as a further aspect of the Delivering Quality First plan that resulted in the replacement of BBC Three with a branded digital presence, the BBC Trust approved a proposal for CBBC to extend its broadcast day by two hours, using bandwidth previously reserved for BBC Three. The two new hours are aimed towards an older youth audience.[9][10]

On 14 March 2016, CBBC unveiled a new logo and on-air presentation, featuring an abstract, multicoloured wordmark enclosed in a box. CBBC controller Cheryl Taylor stated that the new brand was designed to be "fun and unpredictable" and would "appeal to both ends of our broad age spectrum". The logo was also meant to be suitable for use across digital platforms.[11] On 11 April 2016, CBBC officially extended its broadcast day to be from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m.[12]

On 4 July 2017, the BBC announced as part of its inaugural Annual Plan for 2017–18, that it would invest an additional £34 million into children's content for digital platforms over the next three years, in an effort to counter changes in viewing habits.[13][14]