The Children's Channel (or TCC) is a British pan-European television channel owned by Cellcast Group. It's a revival of the channel of the same name. It's aimed at kids of all ages.
History[]
1984-1992[]
The original version of 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). The office was located in London at 6/7 D'Arblay Street.
In March 1989, The Children's Channel started airing free-to-air on the SES-owned Astra 1A satellite, 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, 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. 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. The deal was completed which resulted in Flextech increasing its stake from 50.1% to 75%.
1992-1998[]
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.
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.
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. News Corp went on to launch Fox Kids in a joint venture with sister company Sky. 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.
1998-2005[]
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. 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.
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. The original website stayed running until late 2005.
2024-present[]
Cellcast Group (who broadcast UK Channels before) asked for the rights to the TCC name, Sky Group Limited at first was hesitant but due to the decline in British children's television they agreed to hand them the rights over. TCC was revived.
Programming[]
Main article: List of programs broadcast on TCC
The channel broadcasts programs from local channels such as CBBC, CBeebies, CITV, Pop, Tiny Pop, Pop Girl, Pop Max, Kix!, LittleBe, and others. But it also broadcasts programs from international channels such as Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network, YTV, Teletoon, Disney Channel, Disney XD, Playhouse Disney, Disney Junior, Family Channel, Wildbrain TV, Discovery Family, Family Jr., Vrak, CityKids, Treehouse TV, ZooMoo, and others.
TCC International distribution[]
The success of TCC's revival had lead it some International distributions.
Middle East[]
Cyprus
Lebanon
Syria
Iraq
Iran
Jordan
Saudi Arabia
Kuwait
Qatar
Bahrain
United Arab Emirates
Oman
Yemen
Europe[]
Russia
Belarus
Romania
Italy
France
Hungary
Wales
Ireland
Scotland
Latvia
Estonia
Ukraine
Kazakhstan
Armenia
Azerbaijan
Kyrgyzstan
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan
Estonia
Bulgaria
Croatia
Serbia
Slovania
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Macedonia
Switzerland
Netherlands
Asia[]
China
South Korea
Japan
Cantonese
Thailand
Indonesia
Vietnam
Taiwan
Indonesia
Singapore
India
Nepal
Philippines
Laos
Cambodia
The Americas[]
United States of America
Canada
Belize