Sadly, the viewing figures didn't show them to be Fully Booked! (Fully Booked)

Member Name: pmcds

Product:	Fully Booked
Date:	16/11/08 (71 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Decent enough, god move to shift to Sundays

Disadvantages: Couldn't really compete

Fully Booked was the show the BBC hoped to revive their Saturday morning viewers figures with following the demise of Live & Kicking. With ITV going strong with shows such as SM:TV featuring Ant & Dec and Cat Deeley, the BBC needed to do something to reinstate their former stranglehold on Saturday morning kids' TV.

Sadly for them, Fully Booked failed miserably, and was seen as a show that just followed suit with other programmes as opposed to making a good name for itself under its own volition. The cartoons remained very similar to those of Live & Kicking, with Rugrats and Smart Guy hanging around as popular choices, and with X-Men a welcome addition.

However, the format of the show just seemed a little too amateur. Let me just clear up some confusion here. Fully Booked was the precursor to FBi (Fully Booked interactive) which followed on from this show at the turn of the Millenium. Fully Booked itself ran from 1995 to 1999, and was actually aired on a Sunday morning following a lack of success on a Saturday. Initially, Zoe Ball and Grant Stott presented it, but when FBi took over, the presenters included Vernon Kay and Keith Duffy, with Kate Heavenor returning following her stint as a presenter on Fully Booked in its last year.

The show ran for 4 years, and it was probably a good move to put it on for Sunday mornings as opposed to Saturdays. The show didn't carry enough clout to compete with the ever popular offerings on ITV, which is a shame, but there were elements of the show that I found enjoyable. I know I wasn't really part of the target audience, and am probably being a bit cynical, but I found myself switching over on a regular basis to see what else was on, popping back only for a couple of features or cartoons I fancied watching at the time.

Today, there is a plethora of kids' TV channels, day and night, so special Saturday and Sunday morning TV doesn't seem to hold such an important place any more. Fully Booked was a decent enough show but just wasn't strong enough to compete. Its successor, FBi, was even worse.

Summary: Average weekend kids TV show