Pop Girl


Pop Girl was a free-to-air children's television channel in the United Kingdom, owned by CSC Media Group, a company associated with the makers of The Chart Show, a television programme that had previously been on Channel 4 and ITV. As of June 2014, it broadcast animated series, live action and pop music videos on Sky and Freesat. Its target audience was 7 to 12-year-old girls.
Pop Girl originally broadcast from 6am until 9pm in order to share bandwidth with the now-defunct AnimeCentral, a general entertainment channel also owned and operated by CSC Media Group, which broadcast from 9pm until 6am. Subsequently Pop Girl's broadcast hours were extended to match those of Kix and it broadcast from 6am until 11:30pm. This allowed the sharing arrangement with AnimeCentral to end, thus allowing the entertainment channel to broadcast 24 hours when it became Showcase TV. The channel closed on 1 October 2015.

Programming

According to CSC Media, as of July 2014, Pop Girl aired unique, "defining programmes".

Live-action series

The showreel on CSC Media's PopGirl page also included extracts from Really Me, Flight 29 Down, and How to Be Indie, all which had previously aired on the network.

Animated series

Since 12 May 2008, a new block was made called "Little Miss Pop Girl", which changed the channel's content slightly between 9am and 12pm every weekday. The block was aimed at younger girls and showed animated series such as Lazy Lucy or Pippi Longstocking, including some programmes which are more commonly seen on Tiny Pop. The logo for the block was the regular Pop Girl logo with the words 'Little Miss' written above. The block did not run on weekends or during school holidays.

Pop Girl +1

On 9 May 2008, the AGB Nielsen Media website announced that Pop Girl +1 would launch on Sky channel 629, on 9 June 2008. However, it was in fact launched a few days before that, on 4 June 2008, replacing CSC Media Group's first music video timeshift, Flaunt +1, after being on air just shy of four weeks.
On 22 July 2013, Kix received a spin-off channel, Kix Power, which replaced Pop Girl +1.

Closure

Pop Girl ceased to broadcast at 06:00 on 1 October 2015. The broadcast capacity was immediately replaced with transmission of a revived Kix +1 timeshift channel, though during the course of the day the positions of the channel on the Sky and Freesat guides were altered
It was indicated that some Pop Girl shows would move to other channels in the network: was the first to do so, moving across to POP.
Although Pop Girl ceased as a broadcast channel, the popgirl.tv website continued to exist, and continued offering programming, video clips, quizzes and games; a message on the site indicated that the website would later receive a relaunch as part of its migration to an online service. In addition, a PopGirl section of games, features and videos was made available on sister channel POP's website. It was later redirected to the Pop website.