Having worked for Ragdoll and The Jim Henson Company as well as the Children’s Drama of both ITV and BBC, the most striking factor in Children’s TV is the positive feed back you receive from audiences of all ages. Children react to their home grown output with a passion that is unheard of in mainstream TV, even the Soaps. It is vital that any society with a future seeks to expose each generation to what it perceives to be its best values,both social and cultural. “Buffy” and “Eastenders” may encourage the mangling of the language but they can’t destroy the groundwork done by good Children’s TV. For the present generations who grew up with Television, the home-grown programmes they watched as kids form the backbone of their cultural understanding. To deprive future generations of this heritage would be criminal negligence.
Tom Poole is the award winning director of My Parents are Aliens, Blips, Coronation Street, Mopatop’s Shop, Emmerdale, Tots TV, Brum (which he also wrote), Hububb, and many other programmes.
