The Children's Channel

The Children's Channel, also known as TCC, was a television station in the United Kingdom, Benelux (with Dutch voice over) 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 transmitted from 0500 for 10 hours. In January 1987 Central Independent Television acquired 22% stake in Starstream, within days of buying FilmFair allowing the channel to addition new programming including Paddington bear

In March 1989 the channel began broadcasting free-to-air on the Astra satellite, 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, beating United Artists Cable International to gain a stake. Within a year United bought its own stake in Children's Channel and won the management contract to run it. In the Autumn 1993 Flextech held talks with Tele-Communications (TCI) and about 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 increase it stake from 50.1% to 75%.

In 1992, the channel launched an evening programming block showing programming of greater interest to older children and teenagers. The segment, called simply TCC, broadcast from 5pm-7pm, featuring a number of home-produced programmes, such as CDQ (Compact Disc Quiz) and TVFM as well as US imports such as 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 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

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 with Fox. 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 TCC UK's closure, 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 the 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 4 weeks of programming (including show trailers) on a constant loop.

Tiny TCC/Living
In 1995, the channel introduced a strand for toddlers and pre-schoolers called Tiny TCC, which broadcast every morning from 6am until 9am. The block was transferred over to UK Living on 3 February 1997, and renamed Tiny Living. Its brodacast time were changed to 7:00-9:00 weekdays or 7:00-10:00 weekend. The Strand was finally withdrawn in 2006.

Mascot for the Channel was a huge cuddly Wigasaurus called "Tiny" He also had his own show called "Tiny and Crew! in which he learn new things about life. Tiny had a fixed age of just 5 years in the show. Tiny could not speak. Tiny was joined by Dog who loved nothing more than bones and playing hide and seek and  Arabella, a frog who would sometimes come across a little bossy but loved to try new things. The buddets; flowers who were known for their singing. Tiny was joined by presenters Sarah Davison and Sophie Aldred; then from 1999, a life-like doll called Tammy (Tam).  Last series was craeted in 2001.

Programmes
In its day, TCC created some of its own original programming. Connect 4 and The Super Mario Challenge were popular tea-time quiz shows. Some other 'in-between' show segments included Link Anchorman including Chuck the Chimp and Hopper the Penguin. All of the Puppets were created and performed by Hands Up Puppets. Primarily Marcus Clarke and Helena Smee. Other TV Talent made an appearance or got an early break working on these Series including Konnie Huq then awaiting news of her University place. Some of today's TV honchos and producers also got valuable early TV introducing experience on these Series including Lisa Opie, Tim Lowe, Karen Ward and Mike Crosby.

During school holidays, Ratkan aired 07:00-12:00, with It's Droibee Time off air. A live action quiz programme, "Around the World in 80 Seconds", was produced for the channel in 1993-4. Hosted by Timmy Mallett as Captain Everything, schoolchildren participated in a quiz based on geography and general knowledge of particular countries, before "replaying" famous scenarios from history of their chosen country. The top team received a prize of a four-day trip to the then-new Euro Disney.