The Children's Channel

The Children's Channel was launched on the original Eutelsat satellite on 1 September 1984, almost exclusively to cable households owing to the low proliferation of domestic satellite dishes in Europe, the Middle East and Africa at the time. The channel was owned by Starstream (a joint venture of British Telecom, DC Thomson, Thames Television and Thorn EMI) and worked closely with Warner-Amex. The channel was directed by Richard Wolfe, who had previously worked at Warner. "The Children's Channel" was created according to the old Nickelodeon concept (previously owned by Warner-Amex Cable Communications)[1][2]. The office was located in London at 6/7 D'Arblay Street[3].

In March 1989, The Children's Channel started airing free-to-air on the SES-owned Astra 1A satellite,[4] airing from 5.00am to 10.00am on weekdays and from 5.00am to 12.00pm on weekends, time-sharing with Lifestyle. Following the launch of the Astra 1B satellite in 1991, The Children's Channel expanded to broadcast until 7.00pm each day, time-sharing with JSTV. In 1990, Flextech acquired its first stake in the company,[5][6] beating United Artists Cable International to gain a stake. In 1991, United bought its own stake in The Children's Channel and won the management contract to run it.[7] In late 1993, Flextech held talks with Tele-Communications and acquired TCI's European programming business in exchange for shares, giving TCI a 50%-60% stake in the enlarged Flextech group.[8] The deal was completed which resulted in Flextech increasing its stake from 50.1%[9] to 75%.[10]

In 1992, The Children's Channel launched an evening block showing programming of greater interest to older children and teenagers. The segment, called simply TCC, aired from 5.00pm to 7.00pm, and featured a number of home-produced programmes, such as CDQ and TVFM, as well as American imports including Saved by the Bell. During the day, The Children's Channel continued targeting younger children, and a large amount of its programming output was still archive animated series from the 1980s. As time went on, the TCC block extended its hours, initially starting half an hour earlier at 4.30pm, until the focus on teen programmes eventually became more prominent across The Children's Channel, which became known as TCC all day long. The demographic shift repositioned the channel away from its newly established competitors Nickelodeon UK and Cartoon Network Europe, to a market not adequately covered by others.[11]

On 1 September 1993, it cut back its air hours to 6.00am to 5.00pm, allowing Family Channel to share its space with The Children's Channel, now a subscription service on the Astra 1A satellite via the Sky Multichannels package. By 5 June 1995, Flextech completed its acquisition of The Children's Channel when it acquired the remaining 25.1% stake in Starstream for £15 million.[12][13]

In mid-1996, Flextech were in talks with Fox and News Corp to sell off a 50% stake in The Children's Channel; however, extremely lengthy negotiations made it impossible to secure a deal. Flextech tried to undertake negotiations to secure a different form of investment in The Children's Channel, but decided to refocus on the teen and youth markets instead.[14] News Corp went on to launch Fox Kids in a joint venture with sister company Sky.[15][16] This strongly affected TCC as they no longer had access to most of Fox and Saban Entertainment's library. On 3 February 1997, all the programmes targeting older children was by then airing were split off into Trouble with TCC reverted to the original name of The Children's Channel and continuing to screen programmes for younger children, running side by side with Trouble.

On 3 April 1998, the original pan-European operations of The Children's Channel on Eutelsat's Hot Bird both unexpectedly and silently closed after 14 years. Ratings had fallen massively due to competitors Nickelodeon UK, Cartoon Network Europe, Disney Channel UK and Fox Kids UK launching within three years of each other, reducing TCC's viewer share to 0.2% by its closure. The exodus of teen programmes to Trouble only accelerated its decline. Flextech officially stated that it only wished to focus on the teen market, and there were "so many other channels designed for [TCC's former target audience]". After the closure, Trouble's hours expanded to start at 7.00am.[17] Upon the closure of the pan-regional TCC Europe channel, Cable & Wireless carried the localized TCC Nordic feed for a few months due to the company's anger at the closure of TCC at such short notice. On 5 October 1998, it was taken off the service and its slot was filled by Fox Kids.[18]

However, due to a pre-agreed contract signed some years before to air The Children's Channel in Scandinavia until October 2000, Flextech created an advertisement-free version of TCC known as TCC Nordic to fulfil this requirement to air until 2000 as arranged before finally ceasing transmission. As this service was only fulfilling a contractual requirement, it was totally automated and showed exactly the same four weeks of programming on a constant loop where technical difficulties were frequent. On 30 September 2000, when the Nordic feed's contract expired, TCC closed entirely, more than two years after the original channel's closure.[19] The website stayed running until late 2005.

On 11 September 1995, The Children's Channel introduced a strand for toddlers and preschoolers called Tiny TCC, which aired every morning from 6.00am until 9.00am. This block was then transferred over to UK Living on 3 February 1997 and renamed Tiny Living with its airtimes being changed to 7.00–9.00am on weekdays, and 7.00–10.00am during the weekend. Following the unexpected closedown of its original pan-European operations on Eutelsat's Hot Bird on 3 April 1998, and full replacement by then-timeshared channel Trouble the next day, the strand was finally withdrawn on 1 January 2006.

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