Director, Childseye Consulting Ltd / Secretary Save Kids’ TV
“I believe that unless we take action now, and plan for a better-funded future for children’s media in this country, in a few years we’ll look back and wonder how we allowed a vibrant and creative industry to wither. More importantly, we’ll ask ourselves how we ignored the cultural entitlement of the most important audience in the UK – our kids. People talk about enabling children to be media-aware and preparing them to participate in the “creative economy”. They talk about empowering them to be self-confident and active citizens. But the same people seem happy to preside over a decline in the quality and quantity of programmes which reflect British kids’ lives, interests, passions and enthusiasms back to them. Kids’ shared experience of this content, is part of the glue which holds our society together. Once dissolved it will be very hard to replace.”
Greg Childs has worked in Children’s media for over 20 years. At the BBC, he produced Play School, and a variety of factual and comedy programmes, including the long-running Record Breakers. Greg spearheaded the BBC drive into digital, launching the first Childrens’ BBC websites, a range of innovative cross-media projects, and finally the children’s channels CBBC and CBeebies. Greg now runs his own media-consultancy company, Childseye. He was in the team which launched Teachers TV and the CITV channel and has consulted for the pan-arab educational channel Al Jazeera Children’s. He is also Editorial Director of The Children’s Media Conference.
