Pop and Tiny Pop

[nionlogos18]

Never was a POP or Kix viewer, all I really watched was Tiny Pop. One thing you guys may find interesting about Tiny Pop is that they used to air a cartoon called Billy in the early 2010s, which is almost completely lost. Only three episodes have been found, two in full.

[JetixFann450]

I never really was a POP viewer back in the day. On occasions, I WOULD watch repeats of Oggy and Lab Rats Challenge, at least still in the pre-Sony days where the presentation of the channel was still done on the cheap, but I never really liked POP on that basis.

The real channel, in my eyes was Kix, which was essentially CSC's answer to Jetix, back when that channel was nearing the stages of closure. Around 2009-2010, they did acquire the rights to Power Rangers and some anime from Jetix (since they didn't want to air Power Rangers after the Disney XD rebrand) which definitely helped the channel garner quite a neat audience, even acquiring big shows like Dragon Ball Z. And they did do a lot of Power Rangers marathons so much they even opened up a dedicated channel just for Power Rangers over the half term.

Nowadays, Power Rangers is still on POP, or what's left of it anyway, since most of the show has been moved to Netflix. I could be completely wrong however. Nowadays, POP Max seems to be aiming for a much younger crowd than it did during the Kix days, which is a shame but I'm not in their demo anymore so why am I complaining anyway.

[nionlogos18]

I never really was a POP viewer back in the day. On occasions, I WOULD watch repeats of Oggy and Lab Rats Challenge, at least still in the pre-Sony days where the presentation of the channel was still done on the cheap, but I never really liked POP on that basis.

The real channel, in my eyes was Kix, which was essentially CSC's answer to Jetix, back when that channel was nearing the stages of closure. Around 2009-2010, they did acquire the rights to Power Rangers and some anime from Jetix (since they didn't want to air Power Rangers after the Disney XD rebrand) which definitely helped the channel garner quite a neat audience, even acquiring big shows like Dragon Ball Z. And they did do a lot of Power Rangers marathons so much they even opened up a dedicated channel just for Power Rangers over the half term.

Nowadays, Power Rangers is still on POP, or what's left of it anyway, since most of the show has been moved to Netflix. I could be completely wrong however. Nowadays, POP Max seems to be aiming for a much younger crowd than it did during the Kix days, which is a shame but I'm not in their demo anymore so why am I complaining anyway.

POP Max nowadays is just an abandoned wasteland. Wouldn't be surprised if the channel shuts down soon. Same with the CBS channels

[JAS84]

I never really was a POP viewer back in the day. On occasions, I WOULD watch repeats of Oggy and Lab Rats Challenge, at least still in the pre-Sony days where the presentation of the channel was still done on the cheap, but I never really liked POP on that basis.

The real channel, in my eyes was Kix, which was essentially CSC's answer to Jetix, back when that channel was nearing the stages of closure. Around 2009-2010, they did acquire the rights to Power Rangers and some anime from Jetix (since they didn't want to air Power Rangers after the Disney XD rebrand) which definitely helped the channel garner quite a neat audience, even acquiring big shows like Dragon Ball Z. And they did do a lot of Power Rangers marathons so much they even opened up a dedicated channel just for Power Rangers over the half term.

Nowadays, Power Rangers is still on POP, or what's left of it anyway, since most of the show has been moved to Netflix. I could be completely wrong however. Nowadays, POP Max seems to be aiming for a much younger crowd than it did during the Kix days, which is a shame but I'm not in their demo anymore so why am I complaining anyway.

New episodes of Power Rangers are currently on POP, yes, Dino Fury season 1 is currently airing weekdays 6pm and concludes on Thursday (after which it'll be reruns). Recent seasons and Mighty Morphin are on Netflix, but wasn't most of the archive pulled earlier this year? Instead, they're uploading them onto Youtube!

POP didn't acquire the show directly from Jetix. Disney XD did show Power Rangers RPM, but after that the franchise left Disney and moved to Nickelodeon. Kix acquired reruns of old seasons from Marvista, which was the European distributor Saban Brands was using at the time. It was a few years later when Pop took over airing the new episodes - like in the US, Power Rangers Samurai aired on Nickelodeon. It's true that the reruns were a success for Kix - it's why Pop ended up taking on the new episodes and why the Kix Power pop-up channel existed.

I remember Oggy and the Cockroaches, that was on Fox Kids (Jetix's predecessor) about 20 years ago.

[Rob]

As this thread has been mostly about programming, I've moved it to the Programmes forum.

[JAS84]

You might be interested in this website, called Zeoranger. It's primarily a Power Rangers fan site, but they've recently expanded the promo vault section a lot, and now there's promos for lots of other kids shows too, from a range of channels, including Pop, Tiny Pop, Pop Max and it's former identity Kix, and Pop Girl, as well as CBBC, Cbeebies, CITV, the Nickelodeon channels, Fox Kids and Jetix. http://www.parkproductions.co.uk/zeorang...vaults.htm

[JoshieTrue]

I have lots of memories of the shows on the POP channels, some of them are Sally Bollywood, Rekkit Rabbit, the 2012 LPS and Mona the Vampire on POP, and Milly Molly, Timothy Goes to School, Harry And His Dinosaurs, Loopdidoo and a couple of other shows on Tiny Pop.

[laolun]

Does anyone know if there is any song lists from Rory’s pop party segment back in the day? (2003 onwards)

I used to listen to a specific song on there when I was around the ages of 7-10 and I can see the video in my head but the artist and song escapes me. All I know is that it was on Rory’s pop party.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Gary Baldy]

Does anyone know if there is any song lists from Rory’s pop party segment back in the day? (2003 onwards)

I used to listen to a specific song on there when I was around the ages of 7-10 and I can see the video in my head but the artist and song escapes me. All I know is that it was on Rory’s pop party.

Any help would be appreciated.

I was going to say then that if you were between 7 and 10 in 2003, that you’d be too young to use this forum, but definitely not ? Just makes me realise how old I am- 2003 was really 19 years ago?

[InsideUlster]

I was born too late to a world that doesn't care.

[2 quid]

I've been pretty much an avid viewer of the Pop channels almost since they began airing, in fact I waited up specifically for the launch of Kix, as it really was the answer to Jetix and Toonami for FTA. Once Kix began airing though I hardly watched Pop, so I have very strong memories of the balloon presentation days, and the Benny Hill era, but the one after that where the logo was orange and loads of bubbles were used isn't something that stuck with me.

Pop girl starting up contributed to that a lot too in fairness, so ny households time was split between Tiny Pop and Popgirl/Kix. My cousins were often over so there'd be 8 kids and Pop unfortunately didn't get much of a look in after 2007 for us, as us older ones looked down on it and Tiny Pop was brilliant for the younger ones.

Still though, I have really fond memories of watching Redwall, the magic school bus, super duper sumos, fairy tale police department, Kirby (a huge draw to be honest), Beyblade and Archies weird mysteries, and of course Mario and Sonic. There's probably a whole lot I'm forgetting that'll come to me as I type this up.

But out of all my cousins and myself, us girls outnumbered the boys so once Popgirl started it was obvious what we were watching, and frankly I think it's not spoken enough just how brilliant the channel was and how well it targeted the demographic. The pop music was a real reflection of what was being talked about at school, and the interviews that the Spotlight did were definitely a big deal, considering they got footage with a lot of up and coming bands who either made it to great success (One Direction) or bands that fizzled out like Twenty20, but at least I still have some footage to remember them. They relied a lot on older programming but they had some current ones too like The latest buzz and How to be Indie, Life with Derek, the various Olsen twins films and then quite a lot of Australian and Canadian shows, as well as Nick and Disney shows like Zoey 101 and Lizzie Maguire which were huge hits.

But I think the largest success story must have been Mew Mew Power. Only 26 episodes dubbed and STILL by far the most enduring show on the channel that it would frequently get rerun just by popular demand, which I distinctly remember from the voice over on a promo for a rerun of the show. They had Z squad which was terrible as a follow up, but Pretty Cure with its full 52 episodes was also pretty successful in the ratings, and it's just a shame that they didn't tap more into the dubbed anime market, of which there's plenty more material than girls centered cartoons. Ruby Gloom, What about Mimi, G2G, Braceface and Trollz were all good to decent, but coming into the 2010s there just was not that much stuff available as there previously had been, if Popgirl had started airing slightly more anime or even managed to fund the dubbing of the last 26 episodes of Mew Mew Power they might have had a lot more relevancy than they had by the end of the channel, when they were airing Saved by the Bell. Seriously? That was their saving throw? That show was too old even in 2006 when the channel launched. And with Sony's massive catalogue of anime they surely could have easily aired at least 2-3 series during that 2 year slot they had the channel, instead they decided to run it into the ground.

I guess it's unfortunate that by 2015/6 all of us who initially grew up with the channel from the start were too old for it, but it's a bit depressing that rather than trying their best to revitalise it, Sony shut it down.

They did the same to Kix too and it upset me no end, especially as I was still part of the demographic at the time this was all happening. It seems to me like Sony could not fathom how to market to boys and girls separately, or couldn't be bothered to deal with marketing to the older demographic Kix and Popgirl aimed for. I know lots of older people on other forums and perhaps here like to praise Sony's involvement with the CSC channels but I cannot stand the way treated anything that wasn't called Pop or Tiny Pop. They ran the music channels into the ground too which was also pretty upsetting.

I don't think the updated presentations was worth this, especially as the channels didn't really seem to benefit a whole lot from Sony's catalogue. I'm sure the CSC media group would have updated anyway, they made Popgirl look much more sleek after all.

I might as well talk at length about how Kix's decline was facilitated greatly under Sony's management considering how long this post already is. By September 2013 Kix had been on air for 5 years, and had built a solid reputation for Action, Adventure and Anime. They did air some comedic cartoons, most notably Oggy and the Cockroaches (which I hated on Pop and hated more Kix) but those were few and far between. Even some of the comedic stuff had an action tilt to it, like Bunny Maloney and Mucha Lucha. But for the most part they had the "cool" programming. Batman, Batman of the future, x men evolutions, code lyoko, Di gata defenders, metajets, medabots, Ultimate Muscle, Yugioh, Dragon Ball of course, Transformers, Class of the Titans, Digimon and this is all stuff BEFORE the fantastic rebrand they had in July 2014. It was obvious which direction they were headed in despite the "soft" rebrand of those years to gross out/slime bumpers.

After the rebrand they had more anime, more action, more Power Rangers and for some inexplicable reason, Team Toon. How Sony decided that they could have their cool, futuristic branding, and have a demographic of 12-17, and fill in the schedule with all manner of 11 minute comedy shorts and NOT see a disconnect is beyond me. The nuking of the websites is also something that should have told us of the direction they were going towards. It started with users no longer being able to comment, then with no longer being able to change avatars, and then eventually no longer being able to log in. It was a thriving website that provided interactivity with the channel, as the top 10 on the games leader board would get featured, not to mention the Superfan initiative, but clearly, Execs know better than us.

Sony really did help Pop and Tiny Pop was thriving anyway but they absolutely ruined everything else in the CSC portfolio and for what? Pop Max is a decent channel now in isolation but it's literally a dumping ground for Pop's out of date shows. What identity does it possibly have? The only plus point is it airs Voltron and that's frankly it. The rate of Kix's decline is fantastic too, by 2015 all airing of Dragon Ball were done, and that's pretty much the metric you can use. A show that was easily what Mew Mew Power was to Popgirl, and they couldn't even utilise it properly.

I have lots of good memories of Kix, and I disagree strongly with people who insinuate it wasn't a good channel, it could not be further from the truth. Kix Mix had a great Power Pop/Pop Punk sound, Kix Flix was a good segment also, Extreme Kix again, was great when the channel was still promoting and running extreme sports coverage, and Teen Kix was a great little block that made little old me feel far more grown up than I was, and all of these probably should have stuck around for longer but Kix was pretty ambitious when it launched and couldn't match up to all of that until later on, and by then they'd dropped extreme sports and film and game reviews (remember the short lived magazine show they had?). Which was fine, because their shows still reflected the ethos of the channel until Team Toon and Winston Steinberger took over. Us fans who were here since May 2008 didn't suffer through Hilarious Home Videos and Guinness World Records for this! It's even more upsetting that they missed out on their 10th anniversary by the smallest of margins.

Anywho, now that Narrative has the reigns, and is being controlled by a former CSC guy, I have some small hopes of a revitalised Kix (Pop Max). Whereas Sony used it as a channel to dump even more comedic programmes, Narrative seem to be using it as a placeholder for something, or so I hope. There's definitely a noticeable change in the scheduling but I could be projecting.