Happy (belated) birthday to the Broom Cupboard 

13 September 2010 tbs.pm/1207

For those children of the 80s the sight of Phillip Schofield in a cupboard will always be one that will hold a special place in our hearts. CBBC launched at 3:55 on 9 September 1985 and has been hanging around ever since. (Okay we’re a bit late on this one but I was sitting at home with the flu on the 9th…)

Starting off in a humble presentation studio with a single locked off camera, you could even see the turntable where the announcers could play some music off vinyl if everything went wrong. Real announcers really did used to do their non-CBBC links with the CBBC background behind them as they did their links.

Since then CBBC has spawned in to a multi-media enterprise with its own TV channel and a huge website. And it doesn’t broadcast from a continuity studio anymore (the lovingly named broom cupboard) anymore but from a studio that looks a bit like one but bigger.

In celebration the BBC Archive have unleashed a plethora of broom cupboard video and pictures, including Andi Peters taking us behind the scenes from 1992. And then there’s Edd the Duck on a trampolene…

And if you’re a bit short on time, well here’s some edited highlights…

A Transdiffusion Presentation

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