BBC Children's and Education
The first children-specific strand on BBC 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.
Following the war, For the Children recommenced on Sunday 7 July 1946, with a 20-minute slot every Sunday afternoon and the addition of programmes for preschool 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 BBC1.
Significant series for older children that began in the 1950s included The Sooty Show and Blue Peter.
Other significant series that began in the 1960s include The Clangers and in 1965, the long running story telling format, Jackanory.
[citation needed] In 1976, Saturday Morning television began in earnest with the launch of Multi-Coloured Swap Shop.
In 1983, a Diamond Jubilee Festival Exhibition commemorated the sixtieth anniversary of BBC Children's Programmes at the Langham Hotel in London.
In September 2011, the flagship magazine show Blue Peter began live broadcasts from its new home,[7] with daily news programme Newsround joining it in November 2011.
[10][11] 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".
[14] 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.
[20] BBC Children's commissions and acquires a wide range of programme types, including drama, preschool, news, entertainment, and factual programming.
CBBC and CBeebies is therefore often seen as offering a similar mix of formats to the wider BBC, albeit tailored to suit a young audience.
Byker Grove was one of the very few shows that was not aimed at young children, rather a more teenage/young adult audience as it dealt with some controversial themes.
Other current programmes include Teletubbies, Clangers, Hey Duggee, In the Night Garden, The Story of Tracy Beaker, 4 O'Clock Club, Almost Never, The Dumping Ground, Got What It Takes?, Horrible Histories, Junior Bake Off, Sidekick, Odd Squad, Shaun the Sheep, Danger Mouse, and more.
Following the launch of Children's BBC as a branded block in 1985, the introduction of BBC1's daytime schedule in October 1986 led to the daily weekday offering of BBC Children's consisting of Weekend programmes consisted chiefly of Saturday morning programmes on BBC1, such as Going Live!.
[citation needed] 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 BBC2, 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 BBC2; the relocation of the daytime preschool slot to BBC2, later returning to BBC1 at the start of the afternoon block.
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 both The Weakest Link and Pointless which debuted in 2009 from BBC Two to One to fill the gap, CBBC had to move to an earlier slot as Weakest Link and Pointless were longer than Neighbours was.
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.
[25] In September 2022, CBeebies programming (including Newsround) are back on BBC Two when its Saturday morning strand rebranded as the "Kids Zone".
The CBBC website provides a wide range of activities for children aged 6–15, such as games, videos, puzzles, print and makes, including now defunct pre-moderated message boards, now replaced with comment threads below videos, games and articles.
It provides content for all brands including Tracy Beaker, Sam & Mark's Big Friday Wind-Up, Horrible Histories, Stacey Dooley's Show Me What You're Made Of, Shaun the Sheep, Blue Peter, Newsround, Danger Mouse, The Dumping Ground, Wolfblood, Eve, Dick and Dom, Hetty Feather, Hank Zipzer, The Sarah Jane Adventures, and DIXI.
It also gives kids the chance to view the BBC iPlayer to replay or catch up their favourite CBBC programmes for up to 1 year.
BBC-produced children's programming, in native languages of Scotland and Wales, also airs on BBC Alba and S4C, respectively.
