Channel 4 or 5 before school CITV or CBBC after school Yes, terrestrial broadcast TV in the UK only had 5 channels, two of them literally being called ‘channel 4’ and ‘channel 5’. And depending where you were in the country, you weren’t guaranteed watchable reception on anything other than BBC 1 & 2. Most CN, Nickelodeon, Disney etc shows were sold variously to the three major commercial stations in the UK, (CBBC - literally the ‘Children’s BBC’ - mostly making their own shows) so you constantly had to channel hop between ITV, 4 and 5 to follow your favourites, and if you didn’t pay enough attention to the TV Guide then a show would move stations and if it ended up being on at a time you were watching something else then you’d think it disappeared completely. They were also limited to between about 6 and 8:30 am, and 3 and 6pm weekdays, because those were designated the ‘children’s hours’ on the main network channels. So you couldn’t watch late night shows like Robot Chicken unless you paid for satellite TV to get the American channels or you waited a few years for YouTube to be invented or for the DVDs to come out. And then some shows only existed on Saturday mornings, that’s when the most current episodes of things like Powerpuff Girls and Power Rangers would be shown, with repeats and less popular shows shown in the week.