The Media Advocacy Organisation for UK Children and Young People

Are the Kids Alright?

CMF and RTS London joint event to explore the state of children's and youth media in the UK.

In the face of mass audience migration to VoD, strains on public service for kids, new funding sources in the Young Audiences Content Fund, industry consolidation, and online safety concerns - how is the kids' media industry managing rapid and constant change?

Free event
Westminster University, London NW1
6.30 for 7pm, 22nd January 2020.

Register here.

Newsround Consultation

CMF has responded to the BBC request to drop the afternoon bulletin of Newsround and replace it with more content online. Along with other respondents, we find this to be an under-researched proposal with insufficient evidence of the supposed improvement to warrant Ofcom reducing the quota requirements for children's news or the overall hours of originations produced by BBC Children's by as much as 50 hours per year.

Children's Media Yearbook

The new 2019 edition of the Children's Media Yearbook is available now.

Published by CMF, the seventh Yearbook is packed with articles on the way children watch, the latest trends in content, research outcomes, policy discussions and news of success and innovation in every field of children's media.

It's available to download (cost: £7.95), or in hard copy which delivers within a few days (cost: £10 + p&p).

Online Harms White Paper - Consultation and Response

The government consultation on potential regulation of the internet and social media closed on July 1st. 

You can read CMF's response authored by CMF Executive Group digital representative John Kent.

Young Audiences Content Fund

After years of campaigning by CMF and others, the fund to create new public service content for children and young people has become a reality.  

The YACF which launched on April 1st 2019, will distribute approximately £57m of funding over the course of its three year pilot - for development and production of content from children and teens. The BFI have recruited their team including Jackie Edwards, the former Head of Acquisitions and Independent Animation at BBC Children's, and they will be based in Manchester and Leeds. Criteria for application are now live on the BFI website.

This is major success, after years of lobbying by CMF - first, to create awareness amongst politicians that a fund was needed, and then to ensure that the fund would dedicate its resources to the younger audience.  It provides new opportunities fo ruth commercial public service broadcasters to enhance their offering for young people, for producers to pitch more ideas, to innovate and widen the pool of content, and all of that is of major benefit to the UK children's and youth audience.

"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,