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The Children's Channel, also known as TCC, was a television station in the United Kingdom, Ireland, Benelux (with Dutch voiceover) and Scandinavia, which was owned by Flextech. It began broadcasting on 1 September 1984. ==History== The Children's Channel launched in 1984, almost exclusively to cable households owing to the low proliferation of domestic satellite dishes in the UK and Europe at the time, and originally operated by ''Starstream'' who backed by British Telecom, DC Thomson, Thames Television and Thorn EMI. The channel shared its slot with The Entertainment Network, before sharing with Mirrorvision. In 1986, it started broadcasting on satellite from 0500 for 10 hours. In January 1987, Central Independent Television acquired a 22% stake in Starstream, within days of buying FilmFair, allowing the channel to add new programming including ''Paddington Bear''. 〔NEWS IN BRIEFThe Guardian (1959-2003); 6 Jan 1987;〕 In March 1989, the channel began broadcasting free-to-air on Astra 1A, airing between 05:00 and 10:00 on weekdays and between 05:00 and 12:00 on weekends, time-sharing with Lifestyle. Following the launch of the Astra 1B-satellite in 1991, the channel expanded to broadcast until 5pm each day, time-sharing with JSTV. In 1990 Flextech Acquired its first stake in the company,〔Guardian 18 December 1999 P28 "INTERVIEW Adam Singler and Tony Illsley" By David Teather〕 beating United Artists Cable International to gain a stake. Within a year, United bought its own stake in The Children's Channel and won the management contract to run it. In autumn of 1993 Flextech held talks with Tele-Communications (TCI) 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%. In 1992, the channel launched an evening block showing programming of greater interest to older children and teenagers. The segment, called simply TCC, broadcast from 5pm-7pm, and featured a number of home-produced programmes, such as ''CDQ'' (Compact Disc Quiz) and ''TVFM'', as well as US imports including ''Saved By The Bell''. During the day, the channel, still branded as 'The Children's Channel', continued its focus on younger children, and a large amount of its programming output was still archive animated shows 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 teenage-oriented programming eventually became more prominent across the whole channel, which became known as TCC all day long. In 1993, it cut back its broadcasting hours to 06:00-17:00, allowing timesharing with the newly launched Family Channel, with both channels now a subscription service via the Sky Multichannels package. In 1995, the channel introduced programmes for toddlers and pre-schoolers called Tiny TCC ''(see below)''. By June 1995 Flextech completed its acquisition of The Children's Channel when it acquired the remaining 25.1% stake in Starstream, (parent firm of TCC, from DC Thomson, Thames Television and Richard Wolfe) for £15m.〔US firms invest £92m in FlextechMay, Tony The Guardian (1959-2003); 12 May 1995;〕 During the summer of 1996, Flextech were in talks with Fox/News Corp to sell of a 50% stake in the channel; unfortunately, extremely lengthy negotiations made it impossible to secure a deal. Flextech tried to undertake negotiations to secure a different form of investment in TCC, but decided to refocus on the teen and youth market instead. On 3 February 1997, the programmes for older children (mainly teens) were split off into their own separate TV channel called Trouble, while TCC reverted to the original name of 'The Children's Channel', and continued screening programmes for younger children, running side by side with Trouble for nearly a year, before eventually closing down UK operations unexpectedly on 3 April 1998 at 17:00. Upon the closure of TCC UK, the cable operator Cable & Wireless carried the TCC Nordic feed for a few months due to the company’s anger at the closure of TCC at such short notice. However, due to a pre-agreed contract signed some years before to broadcast the channel in Scandinavia until October 2000, Flextech created a commercial-free version of TCC (known as 'TCC Nordic') to fulfil this requirement to broadcast until October 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 (including show trailers) on a constant loop. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「The Children's Channel」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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