Children's Television: Trends Around the World

CHILDREN’S TELEVISION: TRENDS AROUND THE WORLD
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Japanese children’s television. This reflects a worldwide trend brought on by
the increase in children’s channels: cartoons from Europe are increasingly
being shown on American and Japanese television, as well as American and
Japanese cartoons being exported to other countries.
Despite the huge volume of cartoons, there are very few that create a big
splash at events like the Prix Jeunesse International. An exception is Pingu,
the Swiss animation that is now shown worldwide. In Europe, there are strong
calls for the expansion and development of European animation, so as to avoid
being swamped with cartoons from Japan and the United States. The EBU
Children and Youth Program Group is pursuing a joint production project for
cartoons. However, global success is yet to be attained.
Another development is to combine the technique of animation—which
could be considered the technique perfectly suited to the medium of television—with
other techniques. An example of this is seen in Jakers! The
Adventures of Piggley Winks, a series that mixes animation and live action,
produced in the United Kingdom. Specifically, real scenes of a rural village in
Ireland are combined with cutting-edge CGI technology. The series centers
around Piggley Winks, a grandfather pig, who reminisces about his childhood
adventures in the Irish village of Tara in the 1950s. His audience is his three
grandchildren, born and bred in a bustling American city, and often in need of
some pearls of Grandpa’s wisdom about how the world works. The animation
is beautifully produced, and the voices are provided by a dazzling cast of
well-known actors. The program won a prize in the web category at the 2004
Prix Jeunesse International. How it will be received by the children of the
North America and Europe is still to be seen.
Dreams and Fantasy
In Europe, there is a long tradition of live-action drama as another important
children’s television genre. Drama series are usually broadcast on public television,
and, for Britain’s BBC, drama is as important in the children’s television
schedule as education and the news. On the children’s channel for
6-to-12 year-olds, CBBC, 650 hours per year are devoted to drama programs.
The variety is broad, including literary dramatizations, suspense-packed mysteries,
comedies, and drama series that feature the day-to-day concerns of
children, such as the long-running school-life drama Grange Hill.
A Polish drama, The Wooden Dog, won the Grand Prix at the 2004 Prix
Jeunesse International. The story is set in a snow-covered land, and begins
with the disappointment of a young boy who had been looking forward to getting
a sled dog, but, due to an allergy to dogs, has to abandon the idea. He is
given an old wooden sled, instead, and when he tries calling out to it, the sled