| Pop Girl | |
| Launch Date: | 6 August 2007 |
| Closed Date: | 1 October 2015 |
| Picture Format: | /, 576i (SDTV) |
| Owner: | Sony Pictures Television |
| Sister Channels: | Bliss Chart Show Dance Chart Show TV Flava Kix More Than Movies Movies4Men Pop Scuzz Sony Entertainment Television Sony Movie Channel Starz TV Tiny Pop True Drama True Entertainment True Movies 1 True Movies 2 The Vault |
Pop Girl was a free-to-air children's television channel in the United Kingdom, owned by CSC Media Group (formerly Chart Show Channels), a company associated with the makers of The Chart Show, a television programme that had previously been on Channel 4 and ITV. It broadcast cartoons, live action and pop music videos on Sky and Freesat. Its target audience was 7 to 12-year-old girls.[1]
Pop Girl originally broadcast from 6 am until 9 pm 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 Pop Max 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 (now 'True Entertainment').
See main article: List of programmes broadcast by Pop and sister children's television channels.
Since 12 May 2008, a new block was made called "Little Miss Pop Girl", which sees a slight change to the channel's content between 9am and 12pm every weekday during the school term. The block was aimed at younger girls and shows cartoons such as Lazy Lucy, Pippi Longstocking, Strawberry Shortcake or Horseland, 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' superimposed above. The block did not run at weekends or during school holidays.
On 9 May 2008, the AGB Nielsen Media website announced that Pop Girl +1 would launch on Sky channel 629, on 9 June 2008.[2] However, it was in fact launched a few days before that, on 4 June 2008, replacing CSC Media Group's first music time shift, 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.[3]
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 (so as to move the channel below Kix in the lineup; Pop Girl had been ahead of Kix on both platforms.)
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.[4] In addition, a PopGirl section of games, features and videos was made available on sister channel POP's website.[5] It was later redirected to the Pop website.