Its sister channel Tiny Pop, which was launched on 27 July 2004, is for pre-schoolers. Its second sister channel Pop Girl was launched on 6 August 2007, and also shows cartoons and live action shows but is aimed at a more female audience. Its third sister channel, Kix! was launched on 19 May 2008, and also shows cartoons but is aimed at a more male and teen audience.
Pop broadcasts on Sky Digital, Virgin Media and Freesat. Before and after advertisements during pop music, the channel's mascots — two cartoon characters — talk about upcoming cartoons, introduce competitions, read viewers' jokes and show viewers' artwork. The characters are a dragon called Rorry (identical to "Tricky", who "presented" a Saturday morning show on ITV in 1997), and his pet cat called Purrdy (again, taken from the Saturday morning show).
Logo
Pop's logo originally consisted of the word 'pop' in blue writing, with a red background. When shown on the channel, the logo was animated, with balloons floating past the letters, or the letters themselves becoming balloons. It changed in October 2006 to white letters on an orange background. The letters became all caps, and an exclamation mark was added. In September 2009, it was changed once again. This time having a multi-coloured letters and background animation with stars.
History
Launched on 29 May 2003, it was known as Toons and Tunes for just a month, when it was changed to Pop in June 2003.
Originally, the channel was mainly music videos until February 2004, when cartoons were first shown. Music videos were kept on the channel, but were then dropped entirely during mid-2006. They were later revived in early 2007, but only during a 60 minute slot called "Pop Party".
In October 2006, a further change was added: Now the all cap letters ("!" included) are in 3D and during advert breaks are shown dancing or chasing each other and eventually spelling out the logo "POP!". This ident was set to music very similar to "Benny Hill", though this was changed after a few months, perhaps due to the similarity.
Some of the programmes on Pop have previously screened on other UK channels (and hence it's assumed that the previous rights to show have lapsed); some have not been screened in the UK before. In some cases, the channel which previously broadcast a programme is now defunct (such as TCC, Discovery Kids and Toonami).
On 11 October 2007, Pop was launched onto Virgin Media, along with its sister channel Tiny Pop. In 2008, Pop was made available on the newly-launched Freesat platform.
"Pop Party" is a selection of music videos aired on POP, usually in the form of a 30 or 60 minute programming block. It has aired in a number of positions in the schedule, currently airing at 12pm and 9pm.
CSC Media licences the Pop Party name and brand for use on a series of pop music compilations released by Universal Music's compilations arm U.M.T.V.
Pop Junior
Since 12 May 2008, a new block was introduced called "POP Junior", which has the word "Junior" added to the channel's logo between 9am and 12pm every weekday during school term time. The block shows programmes aimed at the younger end of POP's audience, such as Inspector Gadget or Fraggle Rock.
Current Events
Friday Night Special - back-to-back episodes of a particular show that changed each week. This showed from 5pm to 9pm. the current shows for this event are
Sonic Underground
Super Mario
Oggy and the Cockroaches
Cosmic Quantum Ray
These same 4 shows above also have a marathon every Saturday 6am-12pm.
Every week between the hours of 1:30am and 6am, Pop airs Inspector Gadget, Super Duper Sumos, Kong, Old Tom, Ruby Gloom, Cosmic Quantum Ray and Nanoboy without any breaks, excluding their own continuity shown in between.
Previous Events
These events have been aired occasionally:
Sonic Day - Bank Holidays airing Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog all day. (On the first Sonic Day, Rorry would give out what episode was aired after and before the episode)
Super Sonic Week - 4 episodes of Sonic the Hedgehog between 11am to 1pm.
Super Sonic Hour - This was on April for two weeks: it would play Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog and then Sonic Underground on 8-8:30am, 12pm - 12:30pm and 5pm - 5:30pm. After Super Sonic Hour, AoSTH was taken off the schedule which was replaced with Sonic Underground and that shows time slot changed to Redwall.
Bank Holiday Monday 29 May 2006 - Pop aired Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog (for the first time in more than a month) and Sonic Underground all day.
Sonic Week October 2006 - Pop aired Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog (SatAM) and Sonic Underground all week.
February Half-Term 2008 - Pop aired back-to-back episodes of Oggy and the Cockroaches between 12:30pm to 5pm from Monday 16th to Sunday 22 February. This event will be used again on 25 July to September 2.
Pop Website
Pop recently had a website launched which includes a TV guide and more features such as quizzes, art galleries, jokes, games and competitions. This happened shortly after Tiny Pop had a website developed.
Pop+1 Closure
The AGB Nielsen Media Research website first announced that Pop+1 would close and would be replaced by a new channel called Klix!,[1] however, this was a mistake and the channel was now in fact called Kix!. The correction was made with a new article being posted. It was stated that all the other details will remain the same of which was posted in the original article.[2] Pop+1 officially closed at 6.00am on Monday 19 May, when it was replaced with Kix!.
