British children’s television - on the BBC, Channel 4, ITV and Five - has been widely acknowledged as amongst the most creative and innovative in the world. But changes in children’s viewing patterns, and the ban on certain types of advertising to children, have put huge strains on commercial broadcasters.
Despite the large number of channels on offer, UK kids are facing a diminishing choice of programmes as commercial broadcasters retreat from kids commissioning and the BBC scales back.
For commercial channels this is mainly a product of the significant decrease in advertising revenue around children’s programming which makes it no longer commercially viable. As the number of channels has grown, so the advertising market has fragmented. Added to which, restrictions in advertising certain types of food to children has further decreased the available budget for fully-funded quality children’s TV. It means that the days of Worzel Gummidge, Press Gang, Art Attack and My Parents are Aliens on ITV are long gone. Now only repeats are available on the CITV Channel.
ITV (until recently the UK’s second largest kids’ TV commissioner) has almost completely ceased children’s production. They have closed their internal production department, stripped all the kids’ airtime from ITV1 except for a couple of hours on the weekend, and spend nothing like the £35 million which supported children’s production only a few years ago. They are deserting the children’s audience because it doesn’t provide enough revenue.
The regulator Ofcom is powerless to stop ITV taking these steps as it cannot insist on a specific number of hours, nor can it stipulate how much a broadcaster must spend on its public service children’s output, nor the sort of programmes they schedule, nor whether they make them or acquire them from other territories, nor when they transmit them.
Channel 4 no longer makes programmes for young children and despite aspirations to cater for the 10+ demographic, their funding for a pilot project was withdrawn due to the rapid decrease in advertsising revenue as a rsultof the recession.
Channel FIVE has cut back their children’s programming so that they now only provide programmes for younger children, in their Milkshake block, having abandoned the documentaries and factual programmes which characterised their Shake brand for older children.
The international channels - Disney, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network - produce some programming in the UK, but not enough to fill the gap, and much of that has to be international in its focus so that it can be used on their channels in other territories.
Meanwhile the BBC has imposed budget cuts which will affect the range of programmes it can produce for children – so the production industry is being hit with a double blow. The planned move of Children’s department to Salford, will cause a drain on talent and resources until that transition is completed. The BBC is also beginning to display what can happen when a public broadcaster has no official long-term commitment to the children’s audience and then faces diminished competition. Recently the BBC switched its daytime policy so that children’s programme start 15 minutes later to accommodate a game show - The Weakest Link. Is this what we expect from our public service broadcaster? More Anne Robinson, while Grange Hill is axed?
The BBC has very rapidly become a near-monopoly commissioner of UK produced content. Monopolies are not healthy. They stifle creative competition and lead to questions like “why spend so much when our competitors don’t…?”
The October 2007 Ofcom report on children’s broadcasting in the UK has revealed that despite the appearance of enormous choice in children’s viewing, the many channels available offer only a tiny number of programmes produced in the UK, with British kids’ interests at their core. The figures are shocking – only 1% of what’s available to our kids is new programming made in the UK. What makes up the other 99%? Repeats and imports, and this isn’t good enough for our kids.
British kids will be the losers if their choice is diminished and their diet restricted to mainly American imports. No-one would suggest that American programmes are all bad. Many of them are entertaining, stimulating and excellently produced. What we argue for, however, is a mixed diet of programming so that kids get a window on their own world as well as the wider world around them.
Other countries protect their children’s content and the industries which provide them. Now our government needs to do the same by ensuring there is additional public funding for kids’ media content. With a world-beating industry in collapse and UK kids losing out as their viewing becomes predictable and homogenised, we need new ways of thinking about the funding and distribution of public service content for children.
Save Kids’ TV is proposing a comprehensive solution to the failure of Kids’ PSB and is lobbying politicians to persuade them to adopt it. The full proposition is available for download.
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