A FUTURE FOR PUBLIC SERVICE TELEVISION CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD

CONTENT AND PLATFORMS IN A DIGITAL WORLD
Children’s television
Educating, informing and entertaining
children is one of the fundamental purposes
of public service broadcasting. In this day
and age, this should be a relatively easy task,
considering that children today spend more
hours in front of screens than they do at
school. 433 Indeed, while it is true that younger
audiences are migrating more rapidly away
from linear television as we discussed in
Chapter 2, viewing live broadcast television
on a TV set nevertheless remains one of
the most popular activities for children
and young people. According to Sonia
Livingstone and Claire Local of the London
School of Economics, “96% of children age 5
– 15 use a TV set to watch television, and the
majority (87%) of viewing of broadcast TV
among 4 – 15 year olds is of live television.” 434
CBeebies, for example, is very popular for
the youngest audiences and maintains high
audience figures with a weekly reach of 48%
of its target audience. 435
However, a range of evidence-based
submissions to our Inquiry 436 pointed out
that, while there is no shortage of children’s
audio visual content overall, there is an
alarming reduction in commissioning and
spend on children’s television on the main
public service channels. Latest Ofcom
figures confirm this and point to a serious
fall in investment in children’s TV amongst
commercial public service providers with a
drop of 20% in spending between 2008 and
2014. 437 This has been accompanied by a 51%
fall in consumption of children’s TV on the
public service channels in contrast to only a
5% fall across the whole of television since
2003. 438
Advertising restrictions on high fat and high
sugar food on children’s television are often
cited as the main cause of the reduction
of investment in original programming by
commercial providers. The Children’s Media
Foundation points out that ITV and Channel
5 spend far more on the acquisition rather
than the commissioning of programmes and
argue that the multichannel landscape is
increasingly dominated by animated imports
and high level of repeats. In 2013, commercial
children’s TV channels, including Disney,
Nickleodeon and ITV-run CiTV, broadcast
136,311 hours of content, of which only 111 of
these hours were first-run UK originations, a
decrease from 281 hours in 2010. 440
Advertising restrictions, coupled with the
removal in the 2003 Communications Act of
quotas for children’s television have clearly
contributed to the reduction of the children’s
programming on commercially funded public
service channels. According to Jeanette
Steemers of the University of Westminster,
the Act “spelt the death knell for competitive
commissioning between the BBC and ITV in
particular… at their peak in 2001, commercial
PSBs led by ITV had commissioned 739
hours, spending £74 million.” This is contrast
to the £3 million spent by commercially
433
Children’s Media Foundation, submission to the Inquiry.
434
Sonia Livingstone and Claire Local, LSE Media Policy Project, submission to the Inquiry.
435
BBC Trust, Review of the BBC Children’s Services: Summary Report. September 2013.
436
For example the Children’s Media Foundation, Livingstone and Local, Steemers.
437
Ofcom, presentation to the Inquiry, September 29, 2015.
438
Thinkbox, TV viewing in the UK. Source BARB 2003-2015.
439
Jeanette Steemers, submission to the Inquiry.
440
Ibid.
137