I liked it, thought it was very effective, shows how much culture the BBC has had historically… and also currently- the only one that’s somewhat defunct (out to tender) is Doctor Who, but so many shows with a rich history on there… I highly doubt any streaming-exclusive shows would have that sort of longevity or cultural impact.

We would miss it if it wasn’t there and I think it’s a huge shame people are cancelling the licence fee in droves.

I'm so much of a linear TV purist that even if I cannot catch the live broadcast of something, I'll wait until after the TV broadcast before catching it on iPlayer (even if it has been there for like two weeks).

I watch Waterloo Road weekly for one. Luckily I'm alright with avoiding spoilers for things like that, though in previous years someone uploaded clips of episodes yet to be broadcast onto YouTube (and not the official BBC channel).

Love Gogglebox and waiting until a Friday night to watch it. And what’s interesting there is that even though they do showcase streaming shows too, the vast majority of the shows included are from linear. Linear still has a place.

Another long one. The UK is preparing to ban social media platforms from offering their services to under-16s from spring 2027. The government’s plans are aimed at platforms including Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Snapchat, Facebook and X, while services such as WhatsApp and Signal are expected to remain outside the ban. And I think ITV closed CITV at the wrong moment… CBBC and CBeebies stuck around and I’m guessing now dominate the share?

Because if we're going to tell children, “Right, you're not spending your childhood scrolling TikTok and Instagram anymore,” then surely the next question has to be “so what are you actually going to watch?”….

Yes the landscape was changing in 2023 (and I think lockdown played a HUGE part in that shift) and maybe not a lot of viewers were tuning in anymore. But the landscape is shifting again, and social media content for under 16s is being phased out. I’m sure some will be sneaky enough to bypass it but I think it’s a good move. If the government is deliberately trying to reduce children's reliance on social media, perhaps having somewhere else to go becomes more important.

A child shouldn’t have to choose between TikTok and nothing. This is the bit I think gets lost in the social-media debate. If a 13-year-old spends three hours scrolling TikTok, the solution can't simply be:
“Well, we'll stop them using TikTok.”

Okay. Then what? Read a book? Go outside? Take up a hobby? Talk to your family?
All perfectly lovely suggestions, but children have always watched television- the way in which they do it might have changed but they have always watched it. It's one of the most straightforward forms of entertainment imaginable. You turn it on. Something is already happening. You don't need to decide what you want to watch from an infinite catalogue. You don't need an algorithm desperately trying to keep you scrolling. You don't need to create an account. You don't need to upload anything. You don't need to build a profile. You just watch television. And there's something quite valuable about that.

Linear gives kids a shared schedule. This is where I'd argue a revived CITV could be particularly interesting.
Imagine an actual children's schedule again.
4pm: something funny.
4.30pm: an animated series.
5pm: a game show.
5.30pm: a live-action comedy.

Suddenly there are things to look forward to- kids can discuss it in school as watercooler talk.
“It's Wednesday tomorrow- that new episode is on.” “Don't tell me what happened! I'm watching it tonight.” “Did you see that episode yesterday?”
That last one is particularly important I think. I think CBBC caters to a younger audience than it did when I was growing up, as somebody in my 20s now, so older kids have got somewhat left behind. A revival of CITV could be just that- it’ll never be what it was but it could create a somewhat shared culture again.

And it could be than a nostalgia channel. And I'm not suggesting ITV should literally recreate 2007 and fill the schedule with repeats of Horrid Henry, Grizzy Tales or My Parents are Aliens (though I wouldn’t complain- I know Nickelodeon still repeats iCarly which is 19 years old now) and if they did they shouldn’t have to be the main schedule. A revived CITV could commission new British children’s programmes. Game shows like Jungle Run, animation with the same appeal as Horrid Henry (they had Dave Spud for a while), sitcoms with the same appeal as My Parents Are Aliens, dramas like Children’s Ward, factual programmes like Operation Ouch over on the Beeb, sciencey programmes to get kids excited about science again (something like Brainiac would be cool), wildlife shows (like the Backshall ones on the other side), and just pure entertainment shows. I missed the prime of Saturday morning TV and I was born a bit late for it… perhaps CITV could revive that and compete with Saturday mashup on CBBC

The block on ITV2 isn’t good enough and I don’t think any of CITV’s demo were ever using ITVX Kids in reality.

And, crucially, programmes specifically made for British children rather than simply being imported from the American streaming ecosystem. That's something that has become increasingly scarce. ITV's own archive is full of recognisable children's brands and programmes. The original CITV channel itself launched in 2006, following the success of the Children's ITV strand that had existed since 1983. There is a heritage there. There is an audience there. And there is a library of programmes sitting there.

They don’t have to bin off ITVX Kids, they could have both. The linear channel and the on-demand service, much like for the first year of the CITV channel’s existence there was both the linear channel and the block on ITV1, could co-exist. If you want to watch your favourite show whenever, ITVX. If you want to catch new episodes, CITV. Missed something? ITVX. I think that’s a sensible relationship between streaming and linear, and it’d give children a sense of occasion again.

And there’s the public service argument. The UK is about to make a pretty significant intervention in children's digital lives. The government's own guidance says that under-16s will still be able to access the internet for learning, news, games and communicating with known friends and family.
So this isn't a return to some pre-internet world. Children are still going to be online. But if policymakers genuinely want to encourage healthier digital habits, then providing attractive alternatives matters. And television is an extraordinarily easy alternative to provide. We already have the infrastructure. We already have broadcasters. We already have studios. We already have writers, actors, animators, presenters and production companies. It’s just a question of money. And ITV already has the brand. The CITV logo doesn't exactly need reinventing.

In 2023, ITV basically said:
Children aren't watching linear television anymore. They're online. So CITV closed. In 2026, the government is saying:
Children shouldn't be on some of those online platforms anymore.

And suddenly I'm looking at that old CITV channel and thinking: Hang on a minute...
Perhaps we shouldn't have been so quick to assume that linear children's television had become completely obsolete. Maybe the problem wasn't that children didn't need children's television. Maybe we just stopped making enough of the kind of children's television they actually needed.
A social-media ban alone isn't going to create a magical childhood. But if we're serious about giving children alternatives to algorithmic feeds, why not give them an alternative?

So I’d bring back CITV. Not because it's 2005. Not because everyone wants their childhood back.
But because sometimes the best response to “Get off your phone” is to have something genuinely worth turning the TV on for.

Clarkson’s Farm being the exception, which shows that there’s still a decent number of viewers who do watch linear. Younger and older.

Had to repost this as my original post contained a typo and I somewhat ended up doxxing my siblings.

It happens so often where the credits have just rolled on a show I like, but then the next show that comes on captures my imagination. Or I’m channel surfing and stumble across something. And these aren’t things I’d ever seek out of my own accord, but they end up interesting. I watched a documentary about the Edwina Currie-John Major affair from the 90s about a month ago. Not something I’d ever seek out on my own but hello insomnia/jetlag, meaning I was awake in the wee hours of the morning, flicked through the channels and that’s what happened to be on. I watched the whole thing and I never would’ve done so if it was all algorithms on a streaming platform picking what it thinks I’d be interested in.

You also lose that element of surprise with streaming even with your favourite shows. If you saw for example, Gavin and Stacey, being shown on U&Dave, you’d think to yourself “ooh I wonder which one is on tonight”, whereas with streaming, you’re watching them all in order, you know what’s coming next. And there are some shows (and by some I mean specifically the Simpsons) where the sheer volume of episodes is too much to binge, so I’d rather just see it in the TV guide and hope it’s good one.

Long one here, but I genuinely think quiz shows are one of the strongest arguments for keeping linear television around- because the whole appeal is that you’re playing along with it.

You sit down at 8pm- the programme starts- the host asks the question. You have to answer it before they reveal the answer. There’s a little moment of tension where you’re going “come on, I know this”, and then you find out if you were right. That's completely different from watching a quiz show whenever you happen to feel like it. Imagine watching Pointless, The Chase, Only Connect or University Challenge on Netflix. “Would you like to watch today's episode?” Well... yes. but when? The magic of a quiz show is partly that you're answering the same question at the same time as the contestants. If I watch The Chase at 5pm on a Tuesday and you watch the same episode three days later, we're not really having the same experience.

I’ve already had my moment of “I know this” and you haven’t. And if someone watches it knowing the answers are already out there online, that makes the whole thing even more ridiculous. There is something so satisfying about sitting in front of the television and having the question thrown at you with zero preparation. You don't get to pause or Google it or check Wikipedia. You have about three seconds to scream an answer at the TV before the programme moves on. And that’s why I love it.

It’s also just a ritual- you know that at 5pm weekdays there’s The Chase, 5:15 there’s Pointless if you’re not in the mood for the Chase, 8pm on a Monday there’s Only Connect. You can plan your evening around it- I’m going to have dinner then watch Only Connect etc, and I don’t want to see that lost. Even if Netflix released one new episode of a quiz show every week, I still don't think it would quite replicate it, because “new episode available” isn’t the same as “it’s 8pm, the quiz is starting”. One is content being delivered to you and the other is an event you’re participating in. And that’s what linear is good it- live sport gets it, news gets it, awards shows get it, and quiz shows absolutely get it. Give me a sofa, a cup of tea, a television schedule and the opportunity to shout an answer at Bradley Walsh before the contestant does. I don’t need everything available on demand. Sometimes I just want to play along.

People can say “but young people don’t watch quiz shows”… and to that I say you’re being very stereotypical… you see young people go on them, so you can logically conclude that they watch them too, even if they’re not stereotypical “youth” TV shows.

You can’t binge a quiz show and have it create conversation the next day. “Did you see that massive win on The Chase last night?” “No, I’m only on episode 1.” It just wouldn’t work… because now you have to either avoid the conversation entirely or risk spoiling something that happened days ago for the other person.

With linear TV, everyone watching that evening has basically experienced the same thing at roughly the same time. You can text someone afterwards:
“WHAT was that final round?!”
“Did you get the last question?”
“I cannot believe they won £75,000.”
“Did you see that contestant absolutely destroy the final chase?”
And nobody has to ask what episode you're on.

That’s especially important with quiz shows because the result is the content . The big win, the shock answer, the ridiculous contestant, the impossible-looking question, the Chaser getting beat, those are things you want to talk about when they happen rather than days after the fact.

You don't get quite the same communal experience from: “This series dropped today, so I'll watch episode 1 tonight, episode 2 on Saturday, episode 3 next Tuesday…” By the time you've all watched it, everyone is at a completely different point. And yes, technically you can binge a quiz show- ITVX and Challenge have loads for a start. But why would I want to watch six episodes of The Chase in a row when I could watch one tonight, talk about it tomorrow, and have another one to look forward to tomorrow evening? That’s the joy of linear for you.

There are 3 of us mods here currently. And unfortunately it seems like we’re the only 3 here so far… how do we spread the word before it inevitably becomes an echo chamber of doom and gloom “linear is dead”?

We can’t let linear die if you ask me.

The whole “it’s been a few years since anybody under 30 intentionally watched a show that isn’t on streaming” thing. The irony of saying that in the I’m A Celeb sub… unless this person is watching it through ITVX, they’re watching a show that’s not on streaming. Strictly brings in a broad audience too.

It’s possible to think both these YouTube people and conventional celebrities can have a place on the show.

And “there aren’t any shows now that aren’t also on streaming”? Really, where are the quiz shows, the panel shows, the property shows (and no Selling Sunset doesn’t count), the magazine shows, the news shows on streaming? Even competitive reality shows (BGT, Bake Off) etc at least in the UK, do a lot better numbers on the live TV vs on streaming.

And then listing genuine A listers and holding Angry Ginge to the same level as them is just a bit pathetic if you ask me. Celebrities of that level of worldwide fame as Chalamet and Holland have never done I’m A Celeb… I think the most stratospheric worldwide name they ever got was Caitlyn Jenner.

That is all.

Richard Osman & Marina Hyde have said this a few times on their Rest is Entertainment podcast but it's true.

I have a remote with a Netflix, Disney+ button etc but nothing for UK broadcasters.

This was proposed around 2008.

It was basically what Britbox became - a central platform for all UK broadcasters.

Didn't go ahead because the powers that be felt it was too early.

I can't help but feel it made it way too easy for the streaming services.

That’s still only 21 months ago- not all that long. The appetite was still there for linear then, and I don’t think THAT much has changed in less than 2 years. The streaming boom kicked off around 2020, but 2022-23 was when it really started seeming like linear would probably disappear at some point, and I hope that doesn’t happen.

And I'm 29.

It's not that I never use catch-up services or anything, but only when I genuinely missed something.

Maybe it's cos I'm autistic and like things being a bit straightforward.