SMTV Live (an abbreviation of Saturday Morning Television Live, and also stylised as SM:tv LIVE), simply known as SMTV, is a British Saturday morning children's television programme, produced by Blaze Television for ITV. Operating on a similar format to other Saturday morning programmes for children, such as BBC's Live & Kicking, the programme premiered on 29 August 1998 and ran for 279 episodes across five years, before its conclusion on 27 December 2003.
The programme's format focused on a collection of sketches, competitions and challenges, alongside a compilation of children's programmes and cartoons. The programme proved a major success, contributing to furthering the careers of Ant McPartlin and Declan Donnelly under the partnership of Ant & Dec, as well as promoting the broadcast of Japanese anime series Pokémon on British television. SMTV Live became notable for various elements including a sketch based on Pokémon, the phone competition of "Wonkey Donkey", and the late morning edition of CD:UK that the presenters of the programme were involved in towards the end of the morning schedule. The programme was regularly popular with its audiences, attracting around 2.5 million viewers.
Following its conclusion, Ant & Dec's former company Gallowgate Holdings Limited retained the rights to the show. In April 2017, the duo made a proposal for a 20th anniversary special to reunite them with co-presenter Cat Deeley, but despite an announcement of it being revived during the 2017 British Academy Television Awards, ITV later stated that the proposal had been dropped.
On 26 December 2020, a one-off reunion documentary aired on ITV under the title The Story of SM:TV Live, featuring Ant, Dec and Cat reminiscing on their time on the show.
The series' iconic sketch "Chums" was recreated for the fifth episode of series 17 of Ant & Dec's Saturday Night Takeaway on 20 March 2021 which reenacts and picks up the cliffhanger from the wedding episode 20 years ago, which marked the duo's departure from SMTV Live on 1 December 2001.
Source: Wikipedia (CC BY-SA)
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