New opportunities for children’s media

Michael Hedges February 23, 2009

Children’s television attracts the attention of everybody, it seems, except those young people. Advocates would allocate more public money, alleviating shrinking advertising revenues. Major broadcasters and program producers fight over schedules. The whole of children’s media only survives with clear direction.

The BBC’s iconic children’s program Blue Peter scored its lowest audience share ever. Some days only 100,000 tuned in. At its peak the show might have 8 million viewers.

A review of children’s programming by the BBC Trust, released February 10th, blamed schedule changes put in place last year and gave the BBC until summer to fix it.

“Looking at more recent data it is clear that the reach of CBBC content for 6-to 12-year-olds on BBC1 fell as a result of these changes and while there may have been a corresponding increase to the reach of the CBBC digital channel there has been an overall decline,” said the report: Newsround and Blue Peter make an important contribution to the BBC's citizenship and global public purposes but audience levels have been falling in recent years and this decline has been exacerbated by recent schedule changes.”

Blue Peter and Newsround, also a children’s program, were bumped 20 minutes earlier on BBC 1 after the BBC lost Australian produced soap Neighbors to Channel Five. The BBC Trust observed that school-aged kids were, indeed, in school.

Swedish public TV SVT raised critics ire when it broadcast a documentary “Det ondas vetenskap” (Evil Science) in an early evening time slot when children make up a large part of the viewing audience. The program, not necessarily produced for a young audience, showed corpses, child soldiers and mass graves.

Scheduling does present a challenge. Speaking to a workshop on children’s television last summer ZDF TV content director for children and young people Barbara Biermann addressed the wide issue: “If we cannot be seen, we have a problem.” ZDF is Germany’s second public television network.

BBC Vision chief Jana Bennett and BBC Children controller Richard Deverell indicated they’d get back to the Trust in six months.

Deverell actually hinted at a plan of action, literally and figuratively, in comments for an in-house publication, reported by the Times (UK) (February 18). Top Gear might be a model, to create “playground buzz,” he said. Top Gear is one of the BBC’s most successful children’s programs, reaching male children about 40 years old with fast cars and stunts. The most memorable recent stunt nearly killed presenter Richard Hammond who jet-propelled at 505 km/h. The show is an award winner, visually stimulating and, occasional accident aside, very well produced. Top Gear is also very big in syndication.

ZDF’s Biermann also warned producers on adapting “adult size” formats to children’s TV. 

"If you want to reach kids today, you cannot only make it on television," said Super RTL head of children and family programming Carsten Göttel, also speaking at the Medienforum.NRW workshop.

And kids today haven’t known a day without the internet or mobile phones. And don’t forget iPods and Wii. Blue Peter and its equally iconic American cousin Sesame Street were born to different times. When first broadcast – 1958 for Blue Peter, 1969 for Sesame Street – viewers of all ages could count television channels on one hand and have fingers left over.

While children’s programming challenges broadcasters, money and schedules topping the list, producers find it a fertile playground. Disney, which knows something about children and media, announced last week (February 19) it had acquired the online creative designer Kerpoof Studios last year. Not simply another brain-dead Web destination for kids, the Kerpoof.com site is child-safe, interactive and creative. The announcement was delayed until Disney mounted Kerpoof on its own website.

“We’re pretty excited,” said Kerpoof co-founder Kristi Marks to the Denver Business Journal (February 19). In an earlier interview with the Denver Business Journal (October 5 2007), before a deal with Disney, Marks said she wanted to make kids boredom disappear.

“If it's only an extension of the TV and the telephone, then we've missed a huge opportunity.”