This is something I agree with. How can the UK continue the tradition of excellent Children's TV if all funding such as Advertising gets canned? The current situation is surely harming the BBC's effort too by having little competition. What do other people think?
I can't help but notice how terrible some of the children's output is nowadays compared to 15-20 years ago or so when I watched it. Something does need to be sorted out.
Won't offering a tax cut result in more children's television rather than better children's television? It will be like that scheme that Gary Barlow and friends invested in to help the UK music industry. Companies will be formed solely to churn out hours of cheap rubbish. It can't be long now until Bungle, George and Zippy appear as CGI monstrosities.
Won't offering a tax cut result in more children's television rather than better children's television? It will be like that scheme that Gary Barlow and friends invested in to help the UK music industry. Companies will be formed solely to churn out hours of cheap rubbish. It can't be long now until Bungle, George and Zippy appear as CGI monstrosities.
Brrrr that leaves me all cold. I can see your point about more rather than better Children's TV, I guess regulation is the only way around that. Not something the authorities seem keen on.
We used to have something that encouraged high quality children's programming. It was called a PUBLIC SERVICE REMIT.
:-(
A former member
Or you get someone who cares and want to drive up standards as the head of CBBC or CITV. Kids Dramas really is lacking. mind you Dramarama should be brought back.
I can't help but notice how terrible some of the children's output is nowadays compared to 15-20 years ago or so when I watched it. Something does need to be sorted out.
I think the obvious reason why you think the children's output is worse now than when you were watching it is because you were a child then and you aren't now. I think there's loads of great kids' shows around and the variety is fantastic - you now have proper comedy shows with proper primetime comedians who aren't slumming it, you have a sports programme every week of the year, Blue Peter is as good as it was and the standards across the board are extremely high. I certainly don't think you can accuse anyone working in kids' TV now as not caring for the audience.
There might not be as much drama about now as there was, which is perhaps the only area where there's been a reduction, but to be honest I found so many of the "classic" kids dramas unbeliveably boring. And there were plenty of examples of dreadful programmes in the seventies, eighties and nineties, all the crap cartoons and ancient material we used to get. In the summer too they used to give up completely and you'd get non-stop repeats for months on end.
I don't think you'll find a kids show now that's half as witless or as badly made as the last desperate days of Crackerjack, for example.
The BBC offer two fantastic children's services that we should be extremely proud of, ITV & channel 5 put a bit of money into new productions, the other channels that populate the platforms are filled with recycled programmes from archives or their worldwide owner's American versions.
It would be nice to see a tax break over here to not only create a bit of competition between itv & BBC again (hopefully), to help the BBC lower their budget whilst putting the same into productions, and it could also enable Disney, Nickelodeon, etc to make programmes in this country for a worldwide audience.
I would say that BBC Children’s is on top form. This is partly due to having the excellent Joe Godwin as head of the department. He has devoted his career to children’s television. Unlike all of his predecessors post Anna Home (excluding Nigel Pickard), who used head of Children’s as a step up the greasy management pole - Richard Deverell?
CBBC seems to cover a better wider range of genres. Blue Peter – though under exposed (due to being once weekly) seems to have recovered from the drastic format change that Tim Levell imposed on the programme. Though Newsround seems to be broadcast at graveyard times.
With drama, during the late 80’s and 90’s Anna Home, then head of Children’s programmes devoted large chunks of her budget to Children’s drama – as she was once a drama producer, head of Children’s drama before defecting to TVS. Hence the amount of drama output then, compared to today.
As for Cbeebies, watching with my Niece and Nephew, there seems a shift towards cheep 10 min CGI animation series rather than the Balamories etc when the channel first launched.