Joined up thinking for the digital age: Little Kids TV in a multiplatform world
Jeanette Steemers and James Walters, Westminster University

The children’s television production sector has not been having an easy time in the UK. Producers often talk about the sector being in crisis, but this seems like the sort of crisis from which it may never really recover. First Ofcom is about to ban advertising of HFSS (High, Fat, Sugar, Salt) foods around broadcast programming targeted at the under 16s. Second, ITV the second largest investor in children’s programming after the BBC, has closed its production unit, Granada Kids, and is trying its utmost to discard its tier three public service commitment to transmit children’s programming on ITV 1. With the ban on HFSS advertising, the funding rug has been pulled out from beneath the children’s production sector, with little prospect of any alternatives coming to the fore. This is all happening at a time when the industry is facing the additional challenge of technological change, where even the very youngest children are supposedly ‘proactively recording, downloading and sampling content’ requiring broadcasters and broadcasters to reach out to them in different ways ‘through online, mobile and TV experiences’ (Michael Carrington, Creative Director, CBeebies, 2006).

This paper investigates the reality of the crisis in production for pre-school television, particularly as it relates to the production community in the UK, and investigates the extent to which new media offer new opportunities as well as threats. Drawing on interviews with broadcasters and producers, the paper investigates the extent to which pre-school television is currently conforming to multi-platform commissioning, and the degree to which this necessitates changes and adaptations in a multi-layered creative process. To what extent are commissioning structures being overhauled to work on a multi-platform basis, and how are broadcasters, producers and co-funders managing and creatively negotiating this process, which has both commercial and creative implications? To what extent is this type of ‘joined-up thinking’ possible in the digital era and what are the implications both financially and creatively for the preschool sector?
Session 2: The Aesthetics of Convergence