DOES CHILDREN’S TELEVISION MATTER?

Certainly, when we started in 1957, the TV Company I was hoping to work for clearly didn’t give a toss about children’s television. Well, no, it did, just. It tossed about a hundred pounds a programme to spare programme directors and told them to cobble something together. So when Peter Firmin and I made our first film series about a Welsh railway engine who wanted to sing in the choir, we received about ten pounds a minute for the finished films.

Today, on the rare occasions I watch children’s programmes on television, many of which cost more than a thousand times as much to make, I can see how profoundly lucky we were.

Lucky?

Yes, for two reasons. One was that because the TV Company looked on children’s television as small-time stuff, it sensibly gave a free hand to the very sensible head of the children’s department whose sole purpose was to get programmes that were fun, interesting and cheap. The second reason was that because we didn’t have the money for elaborate equipment we had to rely on the basic hand-writing of animation, laboriously pushing along cardboard characters with a pin. Thus we were thrown back on the real staple of television: telling and showing a good story, carefully thought out and delivered in the right order for stacking in the viewer’s mind. Come to think of it I must have produced some of the clumsiest animation ever to disgrace the television screen, but it didn’t matter. The viewers didn’t notice because they were enjoying the stories.

Also we were lucky enough not to have time or money for lengthy conceptual Meetings. All we could do was try to turn out two minutes a day of film that was fun to watch and hope to pay the bills. It was a happy time.

Then, in 1987 the BBC let us know that in future all “programming” was to be judged by what they called its “audience ratings”. Furthermore, we were told, some U.S. researchers had established that in order to retain its audience (and its share of the burgeoning merchandising market) every children’s programme had to have a ‘hook’, ie, a startling incident to hold the attention, every few seconds. As our films did not fit this category they were deemed not fit to be shown by the BBC any more. End of story – not only for Peter and me – we had had a very good innings – but also for many of the shoe-string companies that had been providing scrumptious programmes for what is now seen as ‘the golden age of children’s television’.
Those days are long gone. Today making films for children’s television has become very big business requiring huge capital investment, far beyond the reach of small companies, and that has inevitably brought with it a particular poverty from which we never suffered.

Poverty?

Yes. In our time we had been able to found great kingdoms of mountains, ice and snow in our cowsheds. In Peter’s big barn we commanded infinities of Outer Space, starred it with heavenly bodies made from old Christmas decorations and made a moon for the Clangers.

Now, today, burdened with the search for the millions of pounds which they have to find to fund their glossy products, the entrepreneurs have to lead a very different sort of life. They must hurtle from country to country seeking subscriptions from the TV stations to fund the enormous cost of the films. Each of these stations will often require the format of the proposed film to be adapted to suit its own largest and dumbest market. They have to do this because, for them, children are no longer children, they are a market.With so many millions at stake the entrepreneurs know that the bottom line must be ‘to give the children of today only the sort of things that they already know they enjoy’. They have to do this because they fear that if they don’t the little so-and-so’s might switch channels and the Company could lose a bit of its share of the lucrative merchandising market.
They do have another difficulty. Because originality can’t be bought off the shelf, (and even if it could it would be too risky to consider with so much money at stake), the competition for quality-of-content, has gone by the board. In its place there has evolved what could be called a competition for quality-of-method. This requires small armies of technicians and artists to spend their time seeking ever more astounding ways for the heroes to zap their foes. That is where the huge money goes: on high technology and on the clouds of pundits who confer at length in costly comfort about motivations, targeting and market strategies.

Behind them, in the manner of mass-market publishers, the nail-biting money-people peer anxiously over their shoulders to try and locate some content, some past sure-fire formula that they can re-vamp and use again.

All this is perfectly ordinary – the demise of small companies and with it the elimination of integrity is just the predictable result of trying to turn a small craft into a massive industry. It is sad of course, because crud is always crud, however glossily and zappily it is produced, but that is just part of a general trend in human commerce, part of the way things are going today.
So does it matter?

Yes it does! The Head of Acquisitions at the BBC outlined the Corporation’s policy in a recent radio programme. She told us:

“The children of today are more used to the up-market, faster-moving things” and that “in today’s hugely competitive schedule we are up against about another twelve to fourteen children’s channels and we have got to stand out.”
As a policy that is, in my considered view, almost criminally preposterous.

Firstly because it isn’t true. There is no such thing as ‘the children of today’. Children are not ‘of today’. They come afresh into this world in a steady stream and, apart from a few in-built instincts, they are blank pages happily waiting to be written on.
Secondly because it simply isn’t true that children have to have what they are ‘used to’. They do want programmes that are new to them, programmes that are original and mind-stretching. They just aren’t being offered them.

Let me give you an example. As part of the same radio programme one of our old film series: Noggin and the Firecake, was shown to a primary school. It was heavy stuff, clumsy and slow by ‘today’s standards’, but my goodness how eagerly the children followed and enjoyed it! At the end they could gleefully recount whole sections of the story, and when asked if they would like more they shouted with one voice: “YES!”

Lastly, the policy is tragically preposterous because there is simply no need or reason for the BBC to ‘compete and stand out’. It is a publicly funded body and it should know that feeding the minds of young people is a seriousloving responsibility. We ourselves have passed this responsibility on to the BBC and it has no business leaving it to the mercies of a money-grubbing market.

Finally, let me offer you the following serious thought.
Suppose, if you will, that I am part of a silent Martian invasion and that my intention is slowly to destroy the whole culture of the human race. Where would I start?

I would naturally start where thought first grows. I would start with children’s television. My policy would be to give the children only the sort of thing that they ‘already know they enjoy’ like a fizzing diet of manic jelly-babies. This would no doubt be exciting, but their hearts and their minds would receive no nourishment, they would come to know nothing of the richness of human life, love and knowledge, and slowly whole generations would grow up knowing nothing about anything but violence and personal supremacy.
Is that a fairy-tale? Look around you.

Oliver Postgate 5 2003

Ps This article was commissioned and accepted by the Daily Mail immediately after the first showing of the radio programme. Unfortunately more important news of butlers and buggery in high places came up and they were, regretfully, unable to publish it.
Later somebody calling himself a ‘free-lance commissioning editor’ offered to have it published in the Sunday Mail if I would interpolate unspecified material of his choice into the text as if it was my own work! I wouldn’t, so he didn’t.

© Copyright Oliver Postgate 2003 – All rights reserved

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