A FIRST FOR NCW! 

CHILDREN'S TELEVISION SEMINAR BROADCAST LIVE ON-LINE 

The National Council of Women's Media Seminar: 'Children's Television’ was broadcast live on-line from Birmingham on 18th February 2009. The Internet broadcast reached a diverse international audience. Simultaneously, participants in Trefoil House welcomed Sir Bernard Zissman who opened the seminar by giving an overview of Birmingham. 

Jackie Baines, Co-Chairman Media NCWGB; Zennia Esterson, Co-Chairman Media NCWGB;  Jayne Kirkham, Save Kid's TV; 
Sir Bernard Zissman, Sheila Eaton, President NCWGB; Lewis Rudd, Voice of the Listener and Viewer; 
Charlotte Fuller BBC -Head of Children's Marketing and Presentation; Kay Benbow, BBC- Head of in-house Production

Lewis Rudd, Voice of the Listener and Viewer and Jayne Kirkham, Save Kid's TV outlined the crisis that has severely affected Children's Television in the UK. It is experiencing its most severe reduction in funding in more than fifty years. 

Jayne stated: “the sense of urgency in Ofcom’s early reports was somewhat lost as children’s TV was subsumed by the wider Public Service debate. Ofcom’s final report’s recommendations had the caveat: ‘if funding is available!” There is a decline in good quality British-made children's programmes in favour of cartoons and US imports. ITV 1, GMTV and Channels 4 and 5 have almost abandoned children's programmes because of cut-backs in advertising investment. The speakers believed that it is essential that a new way of funding be found. 


Charlotte Fuller, BBC Head of Children's Marketing and Presentation described how the BBC was coping with a lack of insufficient funding for children's programmes. During the PowerPoint presentation an additional topic was the BBC’s move to Salford, Charlotte explained “all of children’s will move: CBBC and Cbeebies. We want a BBC for the Internet age. It will be interactive and on demand fully integrated. Our objective is an open and audience focused culture. We will be recruiting a new and diverse workforce, but there will be a challenge in retaining staff as we are not sure who will move from London?” 

Kay Benbow, Cbeebies, Head of In-House Production gave a DVD presentation and highlighted the range of children's programmes broadcast on BBC 1 and 2. One important factor is that children today lead different lives to those in the past and television needs to diversify to address the range of children's media: television, computers, radio. BBC already broadcasts to children on the television, Internet and radio but it further strives to fulfil these aims by providing programmes designed to include all three media areas 

Kay showed a trail of a new programme KWIZ that will be launched soon. This programme fulfils these objectives. Her department accomplished this by devising a way of bringing together a team of people with a variety of skills to cover the different technologies. Questions from the floor included those from viewers On-line from the UK, USA, Israel and Holland.