CBBC/CBeebies

Children's BBC initially launched as a strand on BBC1 in 1985, and for nearly 30 years was used as the brand for several hour blocks of Children's shows on both BBC One and Two. With the advent of the digital era, CBBC and CBeebies channels both launched as additional standalone channels in 2002, coinciding with a relaunch of the CBBC strands on BBC One and BBC Two at the time. The new channels originally broadcast from 7am and 6am until 7pm, sharing the space on Digital with BBC Choice/Three and BBC Four. In the case of CBBC, hours were extended further in 2016 to 9pm with the closure of BBC Three. CBeebies is targeted at under fives, with its collection of programmes such as The Tweenies and Bill and Ben, whilst CBBC caters for the rest of the child/teenage audience. Both are promoted for their lack of commercial advertisements, with them being licence-fee funded.

There are some practices carried out on these channels which the BBC would be much more reluctant to use on adult channels. Any archive 4:3 programmes have the top and bottom hacked off making it 14:9 to pretend they're widescreen programmes. For this reason all the clips on this page are in 14:9 letterbox. Animated graphics over the programming is also a frequent occurrence, although still considerably less than their commercial rivals.

CBBC One/CBBC Two

Children's BBC - 1992

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This CBBC look first appeared in September 1991, albeit with a different soundtrack. This soundtrack would be replaced again with this more familiar version in 1992. Aired here as part of the 30th birthday celebrations for CBBC in September 2015.

CBBC on Two (Intro) - 2004

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From before children's programming was removed from the main terrestrials, some opening titles to CBBC as aired during breakfast BBC Two in 2004. Still featuring the green bugs in some form at this point inkeeping with the dedicated channels which had launched in 2002.

CBBC Channel

CBBC (Credits) - 2002

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Rumoured at the time to be pretty much the basis for the BBC's entire argument of cropping 4:3 programmes - so that the programme's credits can be shrunk down to a blob in the corner, which wouldnt allow clean ratio-switching. This file shows an example of the credits from Sheeep.

CBBC (Credits Love) 2002

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A special heart-shaped blob for the credits of The Animals of Farthing Wood this time, used for some sort of love-weekend.

CBBC (Promo) - 2002

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A promo for Summer on the CBBC Channel. This was shown on BBC1 and BBC2 as well as on the CBBC channel itself.

CBBC (Advert) - 2002

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A programme advert for CBBC, with one of those green bugs again. The problem with the CBBC channel adverts is they only seemed to produce a stock of about 3 a fortnight, which are then repeated ad nausea!!

CBBC (Bug Banner) - 2002

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And here the green blob turns up in the middle of a programme, along with advertising for CBBC's text-messaging stuff. Rumour has it the channel was also here to occasionally show TV Programmes!

CBBC - Christmas 2008

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No longer in the bugs look now for the main CBBC channel, 2007 saw the introduction of another logo, and a new set of idents where the letters were 'sang'. For Christmas 2008, the surreal singing animations of the CBBC Channel are given a festive facelift, with pirates fishing for puddings, and giant bubbles. Amazing what you can do with computers!

CBBC - Christmas 2008

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Golf playing and dancing foxes, all with added santa hats!

CBBC (Promo) - Christmas 2008

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CBBC Promotions over the festive period for 2008 didn't change much from the regular channel style, save for the addition of some snow being thrown at it. Just like their big BBC One brother then!

CBBC (Promo) - Christmas 2009

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The trailer style for CBBC was also very similar to their 2008 package... only updated (rather badly) to include the floating BBC cubes element, shared across all the channels for Christmas 2009.

CBBC - Christmas 2009

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Festive presentation on the CBBC Channel for 2009 also followed a similar style to that of 2008, with a mashup of christmas pictures making up the CBBC letters, before finishing with the same jingle of that time. This particular ident was marked as being the creation of a viewer.

CBBC (Trampoline) - 2017

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A new logo and presentation package were introduced to CBBC in 2016, aiming to give the channel a squarer logo which would work better in apps as they tried to be all hip and down with dem kids. Idents consist of scenes featuring the colours of the new logo, with the scene here showing trampolining.

CBBC (Igloo) - Christmas 2017

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The Christmas ident set for CBBC features a different set of scenes, but still forming up the multicoloured logo with signature notes at the end. Children building an igloo out of coloured blocks feature for this one, one of several in the set that has been reused each Christmas since 2016.

CBBC (Crawlers) - Christmas 2017

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Children throw wall crawlers against a window for another festive CBBC ident. Essentially the same as the crawler ident from the regular rotation, just with different visual effects and a festive soundtrack added in post production.

CBBC (Graphical - Short) - 2018

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A short sting for the CBBC channel, made up solely of colourful graphical elements.

CBBC (Graphical - Mid) - 2018

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A mid-length sting for the CBBC channel, featuring the logo animation made up of entirely graphical elements.

CBBC (Graphical - Long) - 2020

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The full length version of the solely graphical CBBC ident/sting.

CBBC (Drones - Mid) - 2018

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A child controls a drone to carry his coloured bag along in this CBBC ident/sting. A mid-length version.

CBBC (Dennis and Gnasher) - 2019

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A special CBBC ident based around Dennis and Gnasher Unleashed from the channel.

CBBC (Danger Mouse) - 2019

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Another special ident for CBBC, this time based around their Danger Mouse reboot.

CBBC (Sting - Long) - 2019

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In addition to the usual recurring festive idents, for Christmas 2019 a cutout visual style was added to the presentation. This same style was followed through on both stings and dedicated trailers for elements of the channel and website too.

CBBC (Sting - Short) - Christmas 2019

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A shorter sting using the Christmas 2019 'cutout' theme on CBBC.

CBBC (Promo) - Christmas 2019

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An extended amount of the 'cutout' Christmas 2019 theming is used in a promo for CBBC shows on BBC iPlayer.

CBBC (Promo) - Christmas 2019

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Another Christmas 2019 promo using the CBBC 'cutout' style for that year. This time promoting parts of the website.

CBBC (Drones) - 2020

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The full length version of the 'Drone' ident, featuring more time focused on the controls for the drone. In an era of childhood obesity panic, it's good to see children getting all that essential finger exercise rather than carrying heavy weights.

CBBC (Neon Dance) - 2020

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ITV Nighttime as you've never seen it before! Or more specifically, some children dancing with coloured lights for this CBBC ident.

CBBC (Crawlers) - 2020

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A non-festive version of the Wall Crawler ident, once again showing people throwing the toys against a window.

CBBC (Slinkys) - 2020

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Coloured slinky springs are used to make up this CBBC ident.

CBeebies

CBeebies (Bugs) - 2002

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CBeebies also had the bugs (or blobs to be accurate) only this time they're yellow. This short piece is used to cut to the studio shots. There were 3 different versions at launch - one for each of the bugs!

CBeebies (Advert) - 2002

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A CBeebies advert, with the yellow bugs. Whatever you do, dont look at this if you're one of those people with an insane fear of the Tellytubbies!

CBeebies (Kerwizz) - Christmas 2008

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Christmas 2008 on CBeebies. Not much by way of idents though the Yellow Bugs had been given some festive treatment. However this short sequence, featuring the characters from Kerwizz (so I'm told from the CBeebies website) was dotted between some promos and before programmes.

CBeebies (Promo) - Christmas 2008

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The accompanying festive trailer style for CBeebies from Christmas 2008. Although by this time the green blobs on the main channel had been retired, the yellow blobs lived on. Anyone got any Crunchies?

CBeebies - Christmas 2009

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Christmas 2009 on CBeebies and the presentation was similar to 2008, with the yellow bugs getting an added touch of sparkle.

CBeebies (Promo) - Christmas 2009

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A festive promo for the CBeebies Channel, twinned with Rocky Biscuits. And yes... the floating BBC Cubes even popped up here, just incase any eagle eyed 4 year olds chanced to notice it!

Acknowledgements

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