Save Kids' TV

The Party Conferences and the APPG

Greg — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 10:02:39 +0000

None of us are professional lobbyists and it’s been ‘interesting’ learning how to navigate around Westminster and the various broadcasting Powers That Be:

“Children’s TV, ah you want Culture Media and Sport” …

…“Oh, Children’s TV: that would be Children, Schools and Families”…

“Oh that would be Education.” …

Is children’s media just a Media Industry Thing? Or an Education Thing? Or a Biz Thing? Moshi Monsters has a strong public service ethos at its heart but is raking in huge sums. As the most powerful communication tool we have, what about children’s media being an Equality Thing? When she was Minister for Equality, Harriet Harmon, talked about reaching disenfranchised young people. Even the most disenfranchised have a telly. When I was a girl, I discovered Persian poetry through a Rocky and Bullwinkle Cartoon – The Ruby Yacht of Omar Khayyam!

I’m not talking here about preaching, or social engineering but INVESTMENT in different voices and ideas, giving people a choice and a chance to engage with the society they’re part of. Oh, so maybe it’s a Home Office Thing? It’s definitely a Democratic Thing. So when the then Minister for Culture Media and Sport Ben Bradshaw suggested to SKTV an all-party parliamentary group for kids’ media, we saw an opportunity to bring all these departments and interests together and ‘join the dots’ to make a Very Useful Thing. We thought we’d run with it.

The initial support I found at all three party conferences last autumn was strengthened over the winter months with Baroness Benjamin and MPs Lisa Nandy and Tom Watson getting behind the project. We developed and shaped it until last June in the House of Lords we held the inaugural meeting of the All Party Parliamentary Group for Children’s Media and The Arts. With support from over 60 MPs and Peers, and me, on behalf of SKTV, to administrate, the plan is to arrange a programme of events that feed into the debates about children’s media and the arts, giving parliamentarians information and insight on a range of issues. The first meeting came hot on the heels of Reg Bailey’s Report into the commercialisation and Sexualisation of childhood, so we were able to bring in one of the contributors, Ian Douthwaite of Dubit Limited, who delivered an incredibly well researched presentation on what children are really up to online. The parliamentarians that attended were astonished and clearly wanted to pursue some of the issues raised in both houses.

You’ll notice that the Group’s interest includes all media and arts. Just as the parliamentarians across the parties and the departments need to join the dots, so Save Kids’ TV recognises that children’s cultural entitlement is about more than just the screen: theatre, books, music, fine arts, comics, cartoons. We have always had strong links with organisations such as Action For Children’s Arts and The Writers’ Guild and the APPG offers us the chance to come together and support one another’s endeavours in Westminster.

So I’m feeling a little proud that we have this new group off the ground. Save Kids’ TV is tiny, run completely by volunteers and on a mouse’s shoestring. But what we have is a vision and the tenacity to get it done. I’m hardly starry eyed though – Westminster is a crazy place and saying something and doing it are two very different things. Nevertheless we have opportunities we didn’t have before. Over the years, I’ve written to ministers and eventually got back the stock answers and then been forgotten. But questions asked in either house, written and oral, recorded in Hansard have to be taken more seriously. There are many MPs and Peers that genuinely and passionately care about children and their needs. The APPG gives us an opportunity to serve them; bringing information, insight and helpful contacts so that they can serve our young people and their media and maybe actually get things done.

Jayne Kirkham

Autumn 2011

Save Kids’ TV & Children’s Media Foundation Survey

Greg — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:16:57 +0000

Following last week’s newsletter in which we outlined the plan to merge Save Kids’ TV with the new Children’s Media Foundation, we’d now very much appreciate supporters taking ten minutes to complete a questionnaire on what the new organisation will offer and how it should be funded.

You can access the survey by following this link. https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/childrensmediafoundation

For full information on the merger plans you can read last week’s newsletter articles here.

Please let us know your views. The survey will be open until midday, Friday 11th November.

Campaigns and Consultations

Greg — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 21:01:12 +0000

The campaigning continues in various forms.

Animation

Save Kids’ TV is supporting The UK Animation Campaign which has seen significant progress in the last few weeks, with the launch of a specially-commissioned report on the state of the animation industry and the pressure from foreign competitors – many of whom have various forms of state assistance. Campaigning for tax incentives, Oli Hyatt and the team at UK Animation have been arguing the case with MPs including Nick Clegg and Vince Cable and have had major coverage in the press. Up-to-date information is available on the UK Animation website.

Film

SKTV has become a leading force in the campaign to ring-fence funding for children’s independent film with the Government review of film policy now under way. We have responded to the public consultation and made representations to the review chair Chris Smith. The campaign will be one of the first to be taken up by the new Children’s Media Foundation.

Communications Act

The initial DCMS cosultation on the new Communications Act (which will affect broadcasting, the internet and telecoms) has now closed, as the proposals move to Green Paper stage. The Children’s Media Foundation will follow up Save Kids’ TV’s submission to ensure that children and young people are well-served in the new regulatory structure.

BBC DQF

In its broad strategy on “Delivering Quality First” the BBC has committeed to maintain spending on children’s content with fewer cuts than elsewhere in the organisation. The BBC Trust has opened a public consultation on the plans, to which SKTV /The CMF will contribute. Although Children’s seems to be secure, we need to ensure that this position will be maintained, whatever future pressures there may be. The more people let them know individually that the BBC are right to prioritise children’s content and services, the more effective our submission will be. We just need to be sure the Trust gets the message: “stick with the kids”!

Save Kids’ TV Becomes the Children’s Media Foundation

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:47:06 +0000

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Save Kids’ TV will shortly recreate itself as an exciting new body – the Children’s Media Foundation (CMF).

SKTV is joining forces with another well-respected children’s organisation – the Children’s Film and Television Foundation – to form a new body to better serve UK kids.

The CMF will bring together kids’ screen-based media and entertainment practitioners, with academics, educators, artists, parents and others passionate about the media used by children in the UK, and concerned to promote quality and sustainability.

What’s New About the Children’s Media Foundation?

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:46:10 +0000

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The CMF’s remit will be dynamic and evolve to suit the ever-changing needs of the audience and the industry. However it will be built on the following foundations:

Its purpose will be to pursue quality in children’s media of all kinds, on all platforms.
It will speak for children and young people, who, as a group, are frequently disenfranchised and ignored.
It will also act as a critical champion of the children’s media industries and provide briefings and information to government and the media.
It will act as the Secretariat for the new All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children’s Media and the Arts.
It will work with the academic community to stimulate and disseminate research around kids and media.
It will provide online resources and organise events and meetings on children’s media and the issues of current concern.
It will provide a focus for parents, educators, children’s charities, policy makers, and the press, on all matters relating to children and their media lives.
It will be professionally managed and supported through fundraising

What Will Remain?

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:45:26 +0000

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The CMF will continue to be the guardian of the Children’s Film and Television Foundation archive.
The new organisation will continue to lobby for support for children’s content, respond to government consultations, and grow public and policy-makers’ awareness.
It will continue to be a point of contact for the press and other media for comment on issues relating to children and media.
The CMF Board of Directors will be chaired by Anna Home OBE, and includes Linda James (from CFTF) Greg Childs and Nigel Pickard (from SKTV)

What’s Next?

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:45:01 +0000

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The new organisation will still need the help of the many volunteers who have worked with SKTV in the last five years, and it will certainly rely on your support.

This starts with a questionnaire which will shortly be sent to all SKTV supporters. We’d really value hearing your views on the plans for the CMF.

Anna Home outlines the vision for the CMF

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:44:25 +0000

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The Children’s Media Foundation has grown out of two organisations which have the interests of children at their heart – and that will remain its position.

The new organisation has the following aims:

To increase public awareness and improve understanding of the value of media made for children and the issues arising from children’s media use.
To protect the quality, variety, and range of media of all types for children and young people in all social groups.
To support the production of media for children and young people in the UK while embracing stimulating content from all parts of the world.

The CMF will take the basic position that media for young people is a force for good, when well made and properly funded. The CMF will campaign for quality amongst the makers and distributors, and for support for quality, range and diversity amongst the press, politicians and the public.

It will also address the many and varied issues facing young people as media users, and how these affect the industry that serves them, including:

internet safety
commercialisation
audience care, appropriateness and the role of the regulator
support for children’s content in the public service broadcasters
the relationship between media and education
empowering kids and parents through media-literacy
quality of content across all platforms

The CMF aims to be the focus for reasoned debate around these and other issues and it plans to produce evidence to dispel the wilder rumour and conjecture which so often feature in the press. We want to see children and media at the centre of public attention for all the right reasons.

To support that position the CMF will partner with the academic community to stimulate research, and through a continuing relationship with the press and other media it will help disseminate research that broadens understanding of how kids relate to media and how it affects them.

An annual “state of the nation” review of kids’ media will keep the topic in the public consciousness.

As a national body, the Children’s Media Foundation will continue the work of Save Kids’ TV and focus on supporting UK-produced media. But it will also take an international role, as the representative body in the UK and build relationships with other organisations with similar aims to improve the quality of media for children worldwide.

Greg Childs outlines the Save Kids’ TV thinking behind the new organisation

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:43:55 +0000

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Kids… Could there be a hotter topic? They’re either getting the best exam results ever, or they’re knife-wielding, hoody-wearing looters. They’ll be paying for our pension plans and their student debt for the rest of their lives. They’re over commercialised, too early sexualised, , anti-political, anti-social, ASBO’d and obese and generally disengaged!

But they are also… the living messages we send to a time we will not see. (Neil Postman The Disappearance of Childhood 1982).

Children’s media has a powerful role to play in how our kids become the future. For the last five years Save Kids’ TV has been saying that the range, diversity, quality and purpose of the media we serve to our kids really matters. Ensuring that some of that content is made here in the UK, reflecting their lives and telling their stories, is also vital if they are to engage fully with society and our culture as they grow up.

That’s the “big-picture” story for us. But many other stories focused on children and media regularly feature in the headlines and on the radar of politicians and regulators. With children at the heart of the national debate, the time is ripe for SKTV to turn itself into a more permanent, professionally managed and broader-based organisation capable of reacting quickly and pro-actively taking the lead with the voice of reason, supported by research.

Save Kids’ TV has made a fantastic start. The CMF will be there for the long-haul.

Nigel Pickard outlines industry thinking behind the new organisation

Greg — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 00:38:20 +0000

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The Save Kids’ TV story is one we can be proud of. It’s successfully brought to the attention of the public, the press and politicians that kids’ media needs support if it’s to be the best it can be – and that they deserve the best.

We have the talent, the drive and the energy to make fantastic, relevant, exciting content in the UK – on TV, on film, online, on mobiles, on games consoles – and in fact we already do. But to maintain that edge for the industry, and to maintain choice and variety for the audience, we need at least the opportunities, funds and support mechanisms that many of our competitors are offered by their governments.

At last the issue is recognised by politicians, and the setting up of the all-party group in Parliament is proof of that – a Save Kids’ TV success story, which the CMF will inherit.

Currently there are no big solutions for public funding. It’s not exactly the time for that. But the need for support is still on the agenda. The CMF will allow us to pursue that more effectively with backing from the research community and the public.

In its broader role the CMF will provide the industry with a strong perspective on serving the audience well, and act as a co-ordinated voice to build quality, responsibility, responsiveness and sustainability into everything we do.

The CMF will empower the kids’ media and entertainment industries to confidently make a difference in kids’ lives. It needs YOUR support!