Children's TV

I have always loved Science Fiction as a genre - even from an early age. I suppose it's due to the times I grew up in - seeing rockets taking men to the Moon is bound to fire the imagination. There wasn't really that much Sci-Fi on the TV. We had Doctor Who and Star Trek, which appeared on the BBC, and the various Gerry Anderson series (Thunderbirds, UFO, Space 1999 etc) as well as The Six Million Dollar Man which were on ITV but not always watchable due to poor TV reception - often we would switch to an alternative ITV channel to find it would be something in Welsh.

Of those series, I liked the BBC shows best and was very taken with Star Trek although Doctor Who had to be my favourite - what it lacked in budget it made up for in imagination. However, these were not the first Science Fiction series I watched. My first Sci-Fi show was called The Clangers and featured a grey moon-like planet, inhabited by small, mouse-like creatures, who spoke in whistles and just happened to be knitted.

I picked up a DVD containing all The Clangers episodes a couple of years ago. My two youngest children are watching it now and they are absolutely transfixed. By the standard of modern children's programmes it's rather sedate but the stop-frame animation is still enchanting and the stories cleverly intermingle music with visual humour. All of this is narrated by Oliver Postgate's hypnotic story-telling voice.

It's interesting as to what actually entertains children. The BBC currently have two dedicated channels for children: CBeebies for the under fives and CBBC for older children. CBeebies, in particular, has had much thought go into it. Many of the programmes have a good educational content, without being patronisingly worthy, and they also introduce things like Makaton sign language in an inclusive manner - probably the first time that this has been done on mainstream children's programming since Vision On in the early 1970s.

Other children's TV varies greatly. Channel Five has some nice programmes but the adverts which surround them are clearly aimed at pester power and so would limit the amount of exposure that I would want to give to a child. Some of the other children's TV channels don't even have that distinction and the "programmes", for what they are worth, are really just half hour adverts for whatever toys they are trying to sell.

We also pick up a couple of German children's channels. KI.KA is made by the main state TV broadcasters and has a similar remit to the BBC's output but with a broader age range. They do seem to dig deeper into their archives than the BBC and still show programmes like Sandmännchen, another stop-frame animation, which was originally shown in the old East Germany (some of the hints at communist propaganda can be quite amusing). However, it is again the lack of advertising which appeals to me. The other main children's channel is Super RTL - a sister channel to Five - which does produce entertaining programmes - but has the disadvantage of being funded by advertising.

This seems to be the problem overall with children's TV. To be financially viable on commercial TV, it has to be funded by advertising and, usually, this will be for products that are either no good for the child's welfare or no good for their parent's finances. Either that, or the whole enterprise is one long hard-sell for whatever the next batch of Chinese produced plastic toys are. Inevitably, this means that quality children's programming is going to have to be financed elsewhere. I think the BBC does a good job - in fact I would say they do an exceptional job. Other media moguls seem to have the knives out for the BBC at the moment. The only reason for this is a short-sighted attempt to improve their own profit margins but I don't think we should be doing this at the cost of broadcasting for the young. Like public libraries, access to intelligent, unbiased, advert-free broadcasting is something we should be protecting. Commercial TV has it's place, but it's not in the heads of infants.