Children’s TV Body Joins Growing List Urging UK Gov’t Intervention To Help Save Genre In Crisis

deadline.com:

Children’s TV has joined the growing list of UK genres jostling for government intervention after an emergency summit attended by the biggest players in the game.

The Children’s Media Foundation (CMF), which convened the summit earlier this month and was attended by YouTube, has forged a list of “possible interventions” required to help a genre in crisis and sent them to the UK culture department and regulator Ofcom. “Time is not on our side given the known impact on UK children,” said the CMF.

The eight proposals start with the government “needing to address the reality of the children’s media market as it is now, characterised by the loss of audience from UK broadcasters to online streaming and video sharing services.” Backing up recent comments made by BBC kids boss Patricia Hidalgo, the CMF said that “while there is UK-originated and international content of value on these platforms, the audience migration has nevertheless led to a reduction in culturally relevant and UK public service media reaching British children.” Other demands include considering “a new regulatory regime for ‘prominence’ that recognises the need to surface or amplify UK public service content,” and “investigating and considering the role of public service regulation in algorithmic and generative AI outputs for children.” There were also points made about addressing market failure and introducing potential “fiscal interventions” such as tax incentives, levies or lottery funding.

The CMF stressed that the money should not be taken from public broadcasters. As Deadline revealed in December, the summit was convened to resolve grave funding issues amidst existential questions over the genre’s future.