Not in front of the children!

A new series of blogs about the broadcast industry, narrated by David Brennan…

Continuing a theme from my last but one piece (Has TV been Googled?), where I criticised government and regulators for constantly snipping at and limiting the creative industries in the UK, we now have a two-pronged assault on children’s television – yet another market where the UK used to punch well above its weight but has been gradually pulled apart by people who don’t possess a creative bone in their combined bodies.

UK children’s television has often been groundbreaking (I’m thinking ‘Tiswas’ here, but we will all have our favourites from childhood days), hugely profitable (it can have great longevity compared to more grown-up programming and travels well internationally) and critically acclaimed. How do we repay such growth and success in such an important part of our media culture? It appears the answer is to cut it back some more.

Back in 2007, Ofcom introduced restrictions on the advertising of foods high in fat, sugar and salt (HFSS) in all advertising breaks around children’s programming, or in programmes which have a high proportion of children in the audience. Within a few months, ITV had signalled it wanted to end children’s programming on its main channel and the future of their children’s production budgets was under threat. I would argue UK originated children’s TV is in a worse place now than it was then. Who would have guessed?

Ofcom agreed, and they should have guessed. In its report on children’s programming in 2008, Ofcom bemoaned an 80% fall in investment in original UK programme content for children and stressed the belief “that children’s television programming faced significant pressures. There was also a broad consensus… that the need for intervention was required in the short term”.

There was also “general agreement on the importance of the continuing provision of high quality, UK-originated output for children of all ages, and almost without exception, respondents agreed that plurality in children’s television programming was important”.

So, obviously no sense of irony there, then!

Ofcom proposed a number of measures to maintain the quality and plurality of children’s programming in the UK, but precious few of them appear to have been implemented – and what was a major part of our once cherished creative industries has been allowed to flounder.

Now we have, in the space of a week, UNICEF arguing that cutting all television advertising to children will help to shift GB from the bottom of the kids’ wellbeing league (talk about taking a sticking plaster to fix a fatal wound!) and David Cameron openly ruminating that the way to improve his appeal to women (politically, of course) is to ban all advertising aimed at under 16’s.

I’m really interested in the logic that constantly equates TV advertising with pernicious influence (but also severely cuts its use for public awareness campaigns via the COI). I’m even more interested in exactly how they would define and enforce these bans – would they ban any advertising in programmes with a high under 16s audience profile (e.g. The X Factor or Big Brother)? Would they ban products that are not specifically aimed at under 16s (e.g. gadgets) but which are part of their ‘obsessive materialism’? How would the quality and UK identity of kids’ programmes be maintained if even more money is taken out of the system?

It’s the same easy target, at a time when there are so many bigger issues to address. This is particularly relevant in the week Facebook, our kids’ favourite social network, announced a deal with Diageo, makers of many of our teens’ favourite alcoholic tipples.

But what interests me most is why advertising is so often seen as the consequence-free target, or solution to these problems? Is it because those targeting it simply can’t see the consequences, or because they fear TV advertising’s power to influence unlike any other?

If it’s the former, the consequences are pretty clear to see. Investment in original (and trusted) content declines, formerly profitable businesses are put at risk and another chunk of the UK’s creative industry is chipped away. Because there was another news story in the past week;  Media Guardianreported on the ‘Trouble in Toytown’;

There is trouble in Toytown: Thomas the Tank Engine, Bob the Builder and Mr Tickle may be about to leave the country. The debt-laden businesses behind some of the biggest names in childrens’ TV and books are selling off some of the nation’s best-loved characters.

Apparently, the likes of Chorion, owner of the Mister Men and Noddy franchises may be going Stateside. HiT Entertainment, owner of Thomas the Tank Engine and Bob the Builder looks to be going to US and Japanese toy-makers. Entertainment One, home of Peppa Pig, has instructed its investment bankers to conduct a sale and Coolabi (Ivor the Engine, The Clangers, Bagpuss) is about to go into private hands.

Interestingly, broadcast is only 10% of their sales, but a huge part of their marketing profile; if children’s programmes can’t carry advertising, how much lower that profile will get. But then it’s the way many kids’ programmes themselves influence acquisitiveness that the real money lies; that’s what sells the toys, games and gadgets that they really, really want. So where do we stop? Ban children’s programmes completely unless it is John Craven’s Newsround? Leave them to play with the Smirnoff Vodka site instead?

If it is a genuine fear of TV advertising’s unique power to influence and single handedly create a monster of unfettered acquisitiveness, then why does the government in particular put so little faith in its power to affect human behaviour and nudge us towards better outcomes that save well in excess of the investment needed to get them there? Why not use TV more to move behaviour in the opposite way? I’ll bet that’s what their behavioural economists will be advising them, given the sterling work done by the COI in the past.

Or, perhaps, there is an element of grandstanding involved…

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