In many ways, children have never grown up faster and never been savvier. To varying degrees – depending as much on household income as on age – they are all digital natives. But mastery of technology is not the same as understanding the nature of the content it brings – who created it, and why? […]
In his great poem The Whitsun Weddings, Philip Larkin describes a whit weekend train trip from Hull to London. Whit was a popular time to get married so “all down the line fresh couples climbed aboard.” From the carriage windows they watch England flashing by. “An Odeon went past, a cooling tower and someone running […]
When I joined Channel 4 in 1992 as Deputy Commissioning Editor, Schools, it had recently taken over responsibility for schools broadcasting from ITV. My colleague and friend Paul Ashton was Commissioning Editor. Over the next eleven years we commissioned television programmes for schools, to be used in classrooms under the guidance of teachers. We commissioned […]
As I write, it is World Book Day and my social media timelines are full of children dressed as the Gruffalo, and Paddington, and the Worst Witch, all characters from books that they have both read and, more likely, seen on television. The relationship between children’s books and TV shows is symbiotic and has been […]
It feels odd, having created ‘Grange Hill’, and watched it run for 35 years, that there appears a need to even ask if children’s media content is worth preserving. Is that not a question containing its own answer, illustrated by our rich heritage of output? A heritage that stretches back to BBC Radio’s ‘Listen With […]