WHAT CHILDREN WATCH - Ofcom

Executive Summary
1. Households with children living in them contain a wider range of in-home
entertainment than childfree households and are more likely to be ‘early adopters’
of such equipment.
2. Children in multichannel homes watch significantly more television per day than their
terrestrial only counterparts (an average of 35 minutes more per day at 2 hours and
27 minutes). However, the amount of time they spend specifically viewing ‘children’s
programmes’ is comparable with those living in analogue terrestrial-only homes
[Source: BARB].
3. There has been a dramatic rise in the amount of children’s programming on analogue
terrestrial and other television services over the past five years.
4. The increase has come about principally from the launch of the new analogue terrestrial
service Five (formerly operating as Channel 5), as well as the introduction of dedicated
satellite and cable-delivered channels. (The detailed analyses do not include the free-toair
dedicated children’s channels, CBBC and CBeebies, launched after the analysis period
in February 2002, increasing provision still further.)
5. Children are able now to tune in to children’s programmes on the dedicated channels at
any time of day. The replay channels which offer rolling schedules, available in
multichannel homes, mean that children in these homes need not worry about missing
their favourite programmes, as they will be repeated.
6. Despite this growth in provision, the range being offered to children, as a proportion of
the time devoted to children’s programming, is variable on different services. In this
context, analogue terrestrial channels offer the most diverse line-up with regard to the
balance of different types of programming e.g. factual, drama, light entertainment,
animation and pre-school, broadcast on a single channel.
7. This being said, the mainstay of the analogue terrestrial channels is animation, as it is
for the dedicated children’s channels. The analyses do not distinguish between types of
animation and, not surprisingly, this is the genre which most children are watching
within children’s programming. In multichannel homes, more than half the time spent
viewing children’s programmes is devoted to this genre.
8. The result of this dramatic increase in animation is a move away, by children in
multichannel homes in particular, from the drama and factual genres in children’s
programming.
9. The provision of drama on the analogue terrestrial channels is more stable than some of
the other genres, with little significant change across the period sampled. On the
dedicated channels, however, there was a steep decline in drama in 2001.
What Children Watch 1