CITV (1983)

CITV is a British children's morning programming block on ITV and previously a free-to-air channel owned by ITV plc. CITV, then Children's ITV, launched on 3 January 1983 as a late afternoon programming block on the ITV network for children aged 6–12. 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 up 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 demise of in-vision continuity. Nine years later, 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 6:00am to 9:00pm.