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| SCHOOLS - THE FUTURE |
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In January 1993 Channel Four was free! Free from ITV control to become an independent channel. ITV companies would still supply schools programmes but support material stopped. Education officers for ITV still provided support during 1992 as they did from 1987. However, January 1993 saw teachers requiring contacting the newly formed Education Television Company to acquire programme support material. But the biggest shock to schools TV presentation was looming.
Channel Four continued to transmit the ITV Schools on Channel 4 service and continuity. This allowed Channel Four time to commission programmes from independent production companies. That said ITV still supplied content for the initial start-up of the new Channel Four service. The infamous ITV Schools 3D animations were hacked down to only a couple of minutes between programmes during January to June 1993. Then on Friday June 28th 1993 it was all over for ITV Schools. The journey ended and the new Channel 4 Schools service launched in September 1993. Channel Four's new continuity was a thirty second junction. Six minute continuity was a thing of the past. New presentation incorporated new age style theme music with fluidic atmosphere video junctions. Jo Roman, an in-house designer at Channel Four was responsible for the presentation from 1993 ö 1997. A short ten second opening and closing sequence was adopted. Images of periods in history typified an educational theme.  
 
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| FORMAT |
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The Channel 4 Schools programmes were a complete change to the ITV Schools programmes in its entire format. Each junction would last upto a maximum of only thirty seconds. ITV Schools programmes were still used at this point. This allowed Channel Four to get organised with producing their own programmes or for contractual reasons. Some of which were: Believe It Or Not (religious programmes) and Scientific Eye (science programmes). The latter still floats around today I believe - or did anyway.
Where the ITV schools used a spinning ITV logo and clock for continutiy, Channel 4 Schools used a 'gallery'. Basically, a school was chosen from anywhere in the UK, to provide pictures for a term. The pupils would submit them and they could be seen during this 'gallery' (See VT Room). |
| HOW IT WORKED |
The sequence (1993) below shows the typical running order of the junction, as it's known. A programme finishes, leads into either the Gallery (a few minutes) or the thirty second countdown - the latter was not always 30 seconds. Then it was typical for an announcer to come on and explain the accompanying classroom support material etc... The programme followed this.
  
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| OVERNIGHT |
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From 1993 Channel 4 Schools could also now broadcast overnight.
These broadcasts took their lead from BBC2, in that instead of a mix of
different programmes, teachers could tape a sequence of episodes from the
same series. These were run back to back (separated by 30 second countdowns)
and started at 4am (with the logo) through to about 5:15am/5:20am (teachers
notes) - Generally Tuesday to Thursday.
When Channel 4 began 24 hour broadcasting, (circles era) this went as far as 5:30am and slots changed becoming Monday to Wednesday. There was now briefly an "educational" slot on Thursday nights which re-broadcast schools programmes with no intervals, clocks or music. Instead regular Channel 4 continuity and commercial breaks between programmes! This practice stopped quickly, but the occasional schools programme slips through the schedule as a filler late at night. |
| HEAVENLY STING |
| The music for the schools programmes 1993 - 1997 were actually commissioned by Channel Four. The ambient, liquidy sounding themes for both the Gallery and the Countdown were composed by Nick Amour and Andy Carroll at Amber Music - The Heavenly Music Corporation. |