International Outreach
CMF is expanding its understanding of the issues affecting the children’s media landscape and exploring the potential for collaboration.
In October and November 2024 CMF was involved in a series of meetings to discover how other countries and in particular public service broadcasting systems are experiencing and handling the shift of viewing by older children and teens away from broadcast services and onto YouTube, TikTok and other shared video platforms.
Young Horizons, Warsaw
The first meeting was held at the Young Horizons event in Warsaw on 1st October 2024. 15 broadcasters confidentially shared their perceptions of the changes in viewing practice and the solutions some have been putting in place to tackle the audience loss.
Representatives taking part were from:
- AMC Networks International (Hungary)
- BBC (UK)
- BNNVARA (The Netherlands)
- Canal+ Polska (Poland)
- Catalan TV (Spain)
- Česká Televize (Czech Republic)
- LRT (Lithuania)
- LTV (Latvia)
- NDR (Germany
- NRK Super (Norway)
- RTÉ (Ireland)
- RTV (Slovenia)
- TRT (Turkey)
- VPRO Kids (The Netherlands)
- VRT (Belgium)
They revealed universal loss of audience – as expected – but also a range of mitigation strategies.
In most cases the aim was to draw the audience back to the broadcasters’ players (e.g. the BBC iPlayer) by offering promotional or teaser content on YouTube or TikTok. So a couple of episodes of a popular returning series could stimulate audience to return to the broadcaster’s player for the rest. Some broadcasters had dedicated children’s player apps, others sent children to the single app for all users (as is the case with the BBC iPlayer), and recently a couple of the broadcasters revealed they were changing their strategy and abandoning their children’s player in favour of a better, age-graded navigation experience for children of all ages on their main player.
However, some territories revealed that they placed all of their content on YouTube as well as on their player, to offer the content “where the children are watching”.
In Lithuania and Latvia, where building a dedicated children’s player is too costly, they have embraced TikTok fully as the platform of choice (as have huge numbers of 7-14 year olds in the audience figures they revealed). The broadcasters are creating “public service TikToks” following the style and short duration of content on the platform, but attempting to portray culturally relevant and age appropriate material within that style. They admitted adapting to TikTok isn’t easy for experienced programme makers.
All of the broadcasters admitted that they had changed their positioning on branding. Either to focus on key programme brands as the attraction – the IP approach – or to refocus their channel brand as a multi-touch-point cultural service for the young people of their country our region – the social cohesion approach: “this is your place; you speak, we hear you; the things here are all for and about you”.
The latter approach is best exemplified in territories where the broadcaster has taken major steps to engage with children and young people in the real world. One broadcaster – albeit from a small nation – described annual participation in over 360 events nationwide so the channel brand has become a symbol of collective youth culture, the young people’s interests and their voice.
Another broadcaster has launched a media academy that invites teens to learn production and editorial techniques – and at the same time connects the organisation to their new ways of viewing. This has the underlying purpose of seeding a generation with the values of public service media and has proved successful in its first year of operation.
What was clear from the frank and open discussions was that broadcasters – commercial and public service – are losing audience faster than the rate of take-up of their own on-demand services. This remains a concern. But in general there was optimism that there were methods which could be used to maintain the links between the audience and strong local content, tempered by concerns that YouTube and TikTok were now extremely powerful and not obligated to serve children with culturally relevant, age-appropriate and locally produced content.
None of the broadcasters was aware of specific initiatives to divert levy funding into content made for kids and young people. And in all cases, there were no government initiatives to regulate the Video Sharing Platforms to improve prominence for public service content.
They also revealed there were no organisations in any of their countries advocating for the children’s audience in the political sphere in the way that CMF does in the UK.
This was a matter of concern as they considered how they could take the discussions forward – potentially through the European Broadcasting Union Head of Kids Group. It’s clear that as individual broadcasters – and more specifically as the children’s arms of public service broadcasters there is limited scope to influence government policy. So external organisations like the CMF or ACTF in Australia are essential as lobbyists for change.
Speaking to journalists after the Warsaw meeting, Children’s Media Foundation Director Greg Childs said: “There is no government yet that has assured its public service broadcasters that there is a policy for regulation and prominence. Britain should try to take the lead and should start talking very seriously to YouTube about how it’s going to either start working for good or be regulated for good.”
Greg concluded: “If we don’t do anything, we’re going to have a bunch of kids who don’t know what public service media is, who don’t understand what impartial news is, who don’t connect with the places they live, who don’t see themselves and who don’t hear their own stories. And they probably won’t pay for public service media in the future because they won’t understand why they have to.”
MipJunior
At MipJunior in Cannes CMF gathered broadcasters, funding organisations, producers and distributors – plus a representative from the only other independent body campaigning for the audience in the children’s media field – ACTF Australia.
Bernadette O’Mahoney from ACTF outlined recent events in Australia – including continued struggles over funding and a recent arrangement between Screen Australia and YouTube to put some development money into productions intended for the platform. It was thought that there streamers would soon by required to produce children’s content in Australia. The plans to prevent people under 16 accessing social media platforms were also discussed (subsequently passed in the Australian Parliament), though it was clear this was not intended to apply to video sharing sites such as YouTube and TikTok.
The Canadian picture was explained by Agnes Augustin from the Shaw Rocket Fund. The new 5% levy on streamers was welcome but was not without problems in its implementation. It has already been challenged in the courts.
US delegates revealed their channels are not immune to the audience migration away from linear broadcasting. And their players, though successful in some cases like Disney+, were struggling to keep up with the “lost audience”. It was certainly part of the reason for the restructuring and downsizing evident in the large media companies over the last twelve months or so – and this was expect to continue for some time yet.
Smaller broadcasters like S4C in Wales were passionate about the retention of public service values but realistic about the need for a shake up in the way content is delivered. And the BBC revealed that a recent survey of iPlayer use amongst children indicated low usage and awareness.
There was much discussion around how broadcasters and producers could use the new platforms to promote their content – but also more talk than previously of how the platforms could also become the home of their content – in that it was “home” to their young viewers. A former YouTube insider revealed the ad revenues around officially designated children’s content at YouTube were $700m last year, only a small part of the $3.2 billion ad revenue overall. It was not gathered particular efficiently and the younger audience has always been difficult to advertise to. There was no appetite at YouTube to change the way in which they share the revenue with children’s producers.
What became apparent was that most of the larger media companies find it difficult to discuss the issues in public, as it affects their share value. While – as seemed to be the case in the Warsaw meeting, public service broadcasters in increasingly pressured political circumstances have to be careful about “special pleading”.
Animar – An Animation Perspective
With over 90 in attendance, the Animar Convention is two days of policy conversation amongst the leaders of animation across the whole of Europe. They were joined by invited broadcaster and funding agencies to discuss a range of issues including geo-blocking of content distribution, the definition of a “European” work, transparency of viewing figures at streamers, AI in development and production, and the effectiveness of the AVMS Directive – which is what allows European countries to impose quotas, levies and investment quotas on content platforms.
CMF outlined the work we have been doing to bring attention to the “lost audience” to government. All the participants – to a greater or lesser extent – said it was affecting their members’ business prospects. Conventional commissioning was drying up and revenue was not being shared.
The EU AVMS Directive is now applied by 15 different European states or regions – in several different ways. Some impose content quotas for streamers, some attach investment requirements to these, and some impose levies which basically extract revenue and redistribute it through national or regional Funds. The meeting was particularly exercised about two current court cases – both in Belgium – which threaten the powers of AVMS.
In French-speaking Wallonia the government has imposed a levy on the streamers and Netflix has taken the territory to court, claiming that application of a levy through AVMS is contrary to basic European law as it represents a “constraint of trade”. in the Flemish part of Belgium – they have gone further. In the only case of its kind, the Flanders government has levied YouTube, Tik and others. This caused another legal response, as TikTok claims that user-generated content does not fall within the definition of audio-visual content within the AVMS Directive. Both cases tell us something important about how the new platforms will react if their profits are threatened. Results in both cases are months if not years away. But the readiness to litigate is not a good sign for governments considering taking action – including our own.
The outreach exercise has proved valuable for CMF’s subsequent conversations with Ofcom and minsters, helping us set the worldwide context of the diminishing reach of the public service – and other broadcasters and the resultant downturn in the children’s media industry.
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