Media Advocacy for UK Children and Young People

Future of Funding

CMF co-ordinated a campaign to save the Young Audiences Content Fund. Now new thinking has emerged from the CMF debate at CMC: "The YAC Fund - What Next?"

Debate at CMC

Campaign Open Letter

YAC Fund - the Facts

Campaign Coalition members discuss the success of the YAC Fund in this podcast.

 

Podcast

Campaign Open Letter

Public Service Media Report

Explore the CMF multi-authored Report: Our Children's Future: Does Public Service Media Matter?

About the PSM Report

Report Articles

What now? What next? What if...?

CMF Director Greg Childs on the Public Service Media Report themes and possible futures.

Greg's Article

Report Articles

Latest Campaigning

CMF responded to Ofcom's consultation on their plans to "Modernise the BBC's Operating Licence". Essentially the plans would take BBC children's content out of regulation and there would cease to be quotas requiring orginal programmes.  CMF objected on a number of grounds.

CMF also recently responded to a BBC Public Interest Consultation of the Future of the iPlayer, which had very few references to children or young people, made no mention of the potential for a children's iPlayer - sadly never achieved despite many false starts - and does not address the question of what happens to  children who can't access online services when the CBBC Channel becomes iPlayer only.

All CMF campaign activity is listed here.

Children's Media Yearbook

The Children's Media Yearbook 2022 is packed with articles and research reflecting on the past year in children's media and the future of kids' and youth content. You can order a print copy for £12.50 or download a digital version for £10.

Take a look at the content list.  And preview articles:

• Industry Under Pressure, Audience Under Threat
• Can we Help our Children Save the Planet
• The Metaverse: Words of Definition and Caution on the Word of the Year

Yearbooks 2020 and 2021 are also now available for the first time as print copies.

Young Audiences Fund Campaign

The Young Audiences Content Fund was closed by the then DCMS Secretary of State Nadine Dorries  in January 2022.

CMF convened a campaign group of industry bodies, children's media professionals, academics and creatives to send an Open Letter to Nadine Dorries.

The Fund was an undoubted success. It supported 55 productions in its first two years - with more in year 3 - and it financed 144 development projects, significantly extending the range of public service content available to kids and teens. It contributed to the government's "levelling up" agenda, with inclusivity, regional production and vital support for Welsh and other UK languages written into its DNA.

The campaign generated significant political support including questions in both Houses of Parliament and at Select Committee hearings. CMF met DCMS Media and Creative Industries Minister Julia Lopez in April and there's some evidence that the government may take some action on the representations they received.

The future of funding for public service content for kids was the subject of the CMF-produced debate at the Children's Media Conference in July 2022. Ideas that developed in that event are forming the basis of an ambitious new campaign to replace the Fund.  We'll keep you informed....

CMF - Listening to Kids

The Children's Media Foundation's Public Service Media Campaign is Listening to Kids.

Listening to Kids - Young Voices on Media Choices was the first of a series of events in which the voices of young people informed the debate on how public service media might be funded and delivered in the future. Kids Know Best talked to young people about their media choices and contributors to the CMF Public Service Media Report discussed the ideas.

Previously Dubit partnered with CMF on their State of the Nation's Kids research, exploring children's attitudes, preoccupations and concerns in their non-media lives.

More research partnerships and events will follow in 2022-23.

CMF - Public Service Media Campaign

The Children's Media Foundation's Public Service Media Campaign continues with a series of public events on the key questions facing broadcasters, policy and decision makers as they re-think the public service media landscape in the UK.

Show Me The Money is the first in CMF's series of public discussions focused on the sources of and potential new ways of thinking about funding for public service content, this event was an important introduction to the financial challenges ahead and how future funding plans could play out.

Our Children's Future - CMF Public Service Report

The Children's Media Foundation has published a comprehensive, multi-authored report into the future of public service content for children and young people. You can download the full report  or read individual articles.

"Children, and the media they use, are frequent topics of public concern and debate. The Children's Media Foundation will stimulate and participate in this debate - across the entire range of media that children experience."

Sir Philip Pullman, Author and Lifetime Patron,