17th March 2008
The BBC’s announcement that it has cancelled Grange Hill effectively masks a more worrying piece of news: from Monday 11th February BBC 1 reduced its commitment to children’s programmes, pushing back the CBBC schedule by 20 minutes per day in order to make room for The Weakest Link.
CBeebies programming is now scheduled at 3 pm so that there appears to be no reduction in overall hours. But children over 6 are losing out. This was the age group identified as most under-served in Ofcom’s Future of Children’s Television Programming Report in October 2007. The news comes in spite of Director General Mark Thompson’s recent assurances to the Save Kids’ TV Campaign of the BBC’s “commitment to a vibrant and secure future for children’s programming”.
The BBC Trust has revealed that they will be reviewing children’s output as the first of their annual “genre review” projects” and has assured Save Kids’ TV that we will be consulted along with other interested parties. They need to ensure this review is robust and demanding because so far the BBC response has been vague and unsubstantiated. With so much now resting on the BBC as the near-monopoly supplier of kids’ TV, SKTV is concerned that the Trust has allowed this erosion to take place. And for what – a game-show well past its prime? This shows lack of imagination and a lack of care for Britain’s kids, particularly the less advantaged still living in households without multi-channel TV.
