Saving children's television

This week we are going topical by talking about a proposal likley to affect children in the next three years that was announced by The BBC director general, Tim Davie last Thursday to a good deal of controversy.

In a response to the funding settlement involving the UK's Television license by the Government, he issues a raft of proposals dressed up as repurposing the BBC for the modern age and this envisioned moving to a "digital" online only system involving the iPlayer where the programs would be listed to be watched at any time rather than having programs scheduled in linear time going out as a channel.

One channel outlined for this approach is CBBC, Children's BBC, which grew out of children's programming segments for family viewing from the earliest days of BBC tv when there was just a single BBC channel on tv and as we moved into the 1980's the establishment of a Children's BBC Unit with strands of labelled programming.

As the UK moved toward digital multichannel television in 1998 with the advent of digital terrestrial and satellite boradcasting children's only channels started to emerge and into this came ITV Kids and in 2002 CBBC which simicasted cbbc linear tv content from the main BBC1 channel and added extra programming.

When during the period 2009 through 2012 the analogue terresterial service was turned off, it was decided to move all children's programming to dedicated channels so anything of pre-school audience went to Cbeebies and all else went to CBBC exclusively.

CBBC is the home of some iconic shows such as Blue Peter and Newsround  and does show or have produced for it UK produced programs including drama such as  Jamie Johnson, So Akward and Almost Never and some specialist programs.

They include Book Club which is designed to introduce and get children talking about books which is not something that commercial channels touch and involve a good deal of interection between the audience and the show.

Some have suggested that actually to loose the channel but keep the programming online isn't a big loss but it does cut into interactivity because an audience often asks questions in real time on a show creating an air of suspense and surprise which if people didn't know when it was "live" it couldn't happen.

A big part of CBBC is the sense of community - the sense everyone is together watching - from the days of "The Broom Cupboard" with Gordon the Gopher and Edd the Duck to todays HQ (Headquarters) with Hakker T Dogg.

In real time quizes and appearence by stars of CBBC happen between the programs born of the old continuity announcer links that children interact with today online but in the past by letter and phone calls.

In a very real way it makes CBBC a "homebase" for children supplimented by things such as Blue Peter Fan Club where they talk about and during the show with each other and afterwards with presenters.

It may seem odd perhaps to broadcast a whole channel when between say 8:15 in the Morning to around 3:30 in the afternoon most schooldays the audience is at school and like all the BBC's services it is sent out in so-called Standard and High Defination feeds which is costly.

The times you as child looked for extra programming were school holidays and weekends simply because at all other times unless you were poorly you were in school.

Many children themselves have pointed out the numbers of families with poor or no internet, a shortage of devices big enough to watch on for period of time without squinting  and in some households a combination of Mum or Dad working from home, an older sibling playing multiplayer games and younger members tring to watch could lead to freezing.

This was one reason Ofcom, the regulator ruled out a regular tv switch off until 2040 when the infrostucture might be ready.

There is the also the increasing concern over screen time increasingly younger children are spending stearing at small screens and unlike the past they may well of looking at screens also in school.

Perhaps one sensible way that some grown ups have suggested is to run first showings between 3:30 and say 6PM which gives you two and half hours a day into which as most childrens shows are half hourly allows for five shows a day and most shows only have one episode a week.

You could then show 25 shows on schooldays backed up by the iPlayer for later viewing, keeping the HQ interactivity and critically access to all while tackling cost issues.

Such an approach does mean a return to idea of BROADCASTING, making things for wide appeal and sharing spaces rather than the niche NARROWCASTING that has left daytime BBC 1 into lifestyle tv about makeovers, buying houses with bar like quizes and antiques with the odd soap tossed in.

That's similar to what we had before but if idea of transmitted linear channels is to provide it needs to do something other than just playing out shows, it must be for all and be involving directly an audience while those who do want to pick and choice from lots of shows even from decades ago are able to too.

I'm not so convinced a entirely virtual digital world is where we all are when we know sales of records have increased, that despite the use of electronic readers, even children read physical books and magazines of which there is much competition for rack spaces still sell and where live contact is still valued.

We need to find  away offering this that does fit in with the digital world  too rather than just scrapping an actual transmitted channel and identity (and BBC4).