Ofcom finds 'stark' future for kids' TV

[BGonaSTICK]

The preliminary findings of Ofcom's review of UK children's television indicate a huge increase in programming hours in the past decade, but a sharp decline in investment in the genre.

The media regulator's director of market research, James Thickett, who is overseeing the review, today painted a bleak picture for the future of children's TV.

Mr Thickett said the volume of children's programming tripled in 2002, when the BBC launched its children's digital channels CBBC and CBeebies.

However, spend on kids' TV has fallen from £110m per year in 1998 across the public service broadcasting channels, to £90m in 2006, according to Ofcom's findings.

The cost per hour of children's programming on PSB services - from the BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel Five - has fallen from £85,000 in 1998 to £56,800 in 2006.

Mr Thickett admitted that the research, which will be published this summer, was "stark" and a cause for concern.

He was speaking at a Voice of the Listener and Viewers conference on the role of the media in contemporary childhood and confirmed that Ofcom was unable to compel channels such as ITV to increase their children's output or spend.

"Ofcom has powers to make recommendations but our power is only to look at the market as a whole," Mr Thickett said. "We have no powers to prevent them [broadcasters] doing what they feel they need to do."

ITV recently unveiled plans to reduce children's output on ITV1 to only five hours per week in a submission to the media regulator.

Speaking after Mr Thickett's session at the VLV conference Anne Wood, the creative director of Teletubbies producer Ragdoll, told MediaGuardian.co.uk that "parliament needs to intervene" and compel broadcasters to address the "crisis" in children's television.

"Children are clearly the future of our country, and it is dangerous to have broadcasters deciding these things for themselves," Ms Wood said.

"The state of children's minds is of national importance and we need to call on Parliament to make steps and to introduce a children's fund at the very least to safeguard the future of children's television."

"This is the most free market government I have ever known but producers like me are perfectly happy to compete in that free market and take on international competition but we will not be able to do that if we do not have our own domestic marketplace."

Ofcom will publish its full review into children's programming this summer and will assess policy options in the autumn, before considering what forms of intervention will be required, according to Mr Thickett.

[BGonaSTICK]

And we wonder why the country is going to the dogs?

Waaaay too much cheap American dross on TV for my liking. I have to peel my kids away from it somedays.

Complete ****e, all of it >