Why We Couldn’t Wait: Launching Children United and TVCU
It’s easy to talk about what’s best for children and their media but all the while, children are growing up and missing out. But while many talk, others get on with doing. On last November’s World Children’s Day, something very special, but very quietly happened. Nicky Cox MBE tells the story.
Children’s media is at a crossroads. Public service funding is under pressure, commissioning is shrinking, advertising models are fractured, and many brilliant people are leaving the sector altogether.
At the same time, children are consuming more content than ever – but increasingly through algorithm-driven platforms never designed with their best interests at heart.
That contradiction is why we’ve launched Children United and its TVCU channel now. Not because the timing is easy, but because we don’t believe children can wait.
Founded to uphold Article 17 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Children United is our global movement built around a simple principle: children have a right to access information they can trust. TVCU brings that principle to life as the world’s first global news and factual channel created exclusively for children and teenagers.
In a world shaped by algorithms, AI-generated content and polarised narratives, the need for independent, carefully curated news for young audiences has never been more urgent. Children are encountering “news” whether we like it or not, but too often without context, safeguarding or age-appropriate framing. The consequences for wellbeing, civic understanding and trust are already visible.
TVCU has been designed as a web-based, walled-garden, on-demand channel, giving children a safe, trusted space to understand the world, free from clickbait, comment threads and harmful recommendation loops. But we’re also realistic: to reach children, we have to follow them. That’s why TVCU content will also live on YouTube, adapted carefully for the platform while holding firm on editorial standards and child-first principles. To extend reach further, Sky News also shares TVCU’s daily news bulletin across its social channels, helping ensure trusted children’s news reaches families where they already are.
And the audience is responding. In just six weeks since launch, Children United content has already reached 1.4 million views, demonstrating a clear appetite for trusted, age-appropriate news and factual storytelling for young audiences. Our first Children United Live! broadcast saw Tim Peake deliver a live lesson from the Science Museum into 1,100 schools simultaneously, with many more children watching later on catch-up – a powerful reminder of what’s possible when live, shared moments are built specifically for children.
Crucially, this isn’t theory – it’s happening. Sky is funding TVCU’s daily news bulletin and longer-form documentaries, providing a vital foundation at a moment when children’s news provision has all but disappeared elsewhere. Alongside this, we’re working with trusted content partners including WWF, UNICEF and the Science Museum Group, ensuring expertise, accuracy and depth across everything we produce.
The editorial vision is led by Nicky Cox, who spent nearly 20 years as editor of First News and is CEO of BAFTA-winning Fresh Start Media, creators of Sky Kids’ and Sky News’ long-running children’s news programme FYI. But Children United is deliberately bigger than any one team or organisation. It’s designed as a platform – editorially rigorous, collaborative by nature, and open to contribution.
Alongside the channel sits the Children United Foundation, which exists to protect the independence and sustainability of children’s journalism long term. Through the Foundation, organisations and individuals can become patrons of the Independent Children’s News Fund, which will pay directly for the creation and free global distribution of TVCU’s rolling news. It’s a philanthropic model designed to keep core news content impartial, accessible and protected from commercial pressure.
This is not about nostalgia for what children’s television once was. It’s about recognising what children need now, and acting before the gap grows wider.
Children United has launched because we believe this work matters, and because waiting for “better conditions” is no longer an option. If you’re a journalist, producer, educator, commissioner, funder or organisation who believes in trusted content for young audiences – and you think you could contribute – I’d love to hear from you.
You can reach me directly at nicky@childrenunited.com. Give us a follow on social platforms @tvcuglobal and check out the channel at childrenunited.com.
Regulate, regulate, regulate! Children’s Media Summit ’26 Opening Speech