Growing up with Television

October 29th, 2004

I watch a lot of Television, I've always watched a lot. There's a great deal of resonance in the shared experience of Hong Kong Phooey – Not the Nine O'clock News and the Rise and Fall of Reggie Perrin. I can recite most of it all – still. Twenty or even ten years ago, everybody knew the names of the Blue Peter presenters even the grown ups.
Go on, what are the names of the current lot?
My kids watch a lot of television. But their experiences are more solitary. They have both grown up with the "benefit" of a multi-channel environment. There are only four years between my kids, and already they have different tastes and different opportunities.
There are more programmes aimed at my two year old than there were only four years ago. They have no shared experience in Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine and Teletubbies. – In the four year gap the landscape has already changed. Four years ago it was wall to wall Bob and Thomas – programme scheduling has got more complex.
Children's television is a very competitive market. It is dominated by the BBC which has two very large stations in the digital arena CBBC aimed at 7+ year olds, and CBeeBies aimed at pre schoolers.
These channels are on Cable, Sky Digital and Freeview (Digital Terrestrial) Platforms. The market is dominated by big players with well branded channel offerings – Viacom with Nickelodeon, Nick Toons, Nick Jr; Turner with Cartoon Network, Boomerang and Toonami; Fox with Jetix; Disney with Disney Channel, Toon Disney and Playhouse Disney, it is a very crowded space.
Discovery have Discovery Kids, plus there's a kids music station called pop which funnily enough shows kid friendly pop music!

With the exception of the BBC stations and Discovery Kids all of these channels carry advertising. The BBC cannot carry advertising and Discovery doesn't because of the way in which Discovery kids business is structured.
Meanwhile the traditional free to air market has changed alongside the developments in the digital space. BBC One is now a mere promotional platform for CBBC and CBeeBies and it effectively "opts out" to these new digital channels. ITV is finding things the most difficult and has sort output deals with the digital big boys.
ITV of course has the most to loose, as there is no CITV digital platform which ITV1 can act as a driver for. It has also not capitalised on the massive licensing opportunities which others have – notably the BBC with Tinky Winky etal. In reaction CITV has entered into a joint venture with Viacom with its Nickelodeon brand.
Put simply there is no shared experience because of market fragmentation. It's also the speed of this fragmentation has taken hold.
Like Sport before it, where the digital platform has taken a strangle hold, children's tele is an example of the supremacy of digital over analogue tele.
It also acts as an example of how broadcasters have identified a niche and bombarded its audience with choice. This is synchronised with highly lucrative product licensing, brand extensions, interactivity, online experiences and phone revenues.

Children's tele is a portent for what is to come in the wider broadcast environment. Because it is highly targeted – it is able to move quicker, it also benefits from the fact that the audience knows no different, they are not harking back to the good old days of tele, they are busy enjoying what they've got. Kids are also netwise and mobile friendly, they are keen to engage.
This sends a shiver down my liberal parental spine where my kids can be picked off by marketeers. But hey I've got to deal with that as a responsible parent. As I said, my kids watch a lot of television and they can already tell the wheat from the chaff, and there's plenty to choose from.
If I take a step back and look at how these businesses as a television producer then I can look into a possible future of how programmes will be financed in other genres. Product licensing, brand extensions, interactivity online and phone revenues are the buzz words of the marketing community, they sit alongside so called AFP as part of the new communication tools set to integrate into a larger strategy of engagement. As someone charged with looking at how to finance television production in a market where there might be dwindling advertising revenues, the broadcast landscape of the children's market is a template for a possible future.

What I shouldn't do is get carried away and start to make rash predictions about a brave new world of more transparent commercial relationships, between marketers and broadcasters. Children's television is unique and it's audience is unique. What Children's television does demonstrate is that things have changed. The viewers experience is different form that of ten years ago, and the business structures behind the programme production has changed. These changes will only continue.
Contributed by: John Nolan is head of commercial programming at NorthOne TV, London.

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