Media release November, 2018
Radical revamp needed for kids' TV quotas
'Today's kids are way ahead of our broadcasting regulators and TV producers in the way they use television and the new media. It's time for a radical rethink of quotas, content regulations and funding for children's media education and entertainment.'
This is the provocative view of the original architect of the C-Classification and drama quotas for children's television Dr Patricia Edgar. As the Government continues to hold-back from releasing its response to the Australian and Children's Screen Content Review Dr Edgar urges the Government and ACMA (the Australian Communication Media Authority) to drop quotas in favour of a new funding model more attuned to the needs and interests of today's children.
She says:
'ACMA, the production industry and the ACTF (Australian Children's Television Foundation) - which she established in 1982 - are locked into an outdated paradigm; a media world that children have left far behind.
'Kids today are not watching scheduled television programs produced for them; they are voting with their feet, making their own films, going on YouTube, playing interactive computer games, exchanging ideas and videos online, learning from the engaging fun of new media and refusing to watch poor-quality banal programs based on the old quota system.
The broadcast television child market is tanking. The BBC, once a dominant world player in children's television has found, despite making their biggest investment in children's content and services in a generation, more than 80% of their potential audience goes to YouTube for on-demand content, half go to Netflix and fewer than 20% now go to the BBC.
'Ofcom, the UK regulator, argues that setting quotas would not be an effective approach; reaching children means exploiting the opportunities presented by the internet.
Nickelodeon, Viacom's global children's channel, has suffered the same fate as the BBC with ratings for children aged between 2 and 11 down 25% in a year. Across the globe this migration of children from traditional Broad-casting will only increase as Apple and Amazon roll out their programs.
'To increase quotas and fly in the face of such global evidence would be shameful, wasteful policy idiocy.'
Patricia Edgar argues the Government should put in place an entirely new model. Children's quotas should be abolished, but TV channels should not be let off the hook. They should be charged an annual levy of at least $10 million to fund a new agency, or division of Screen Australia, charged with the task of developing innovative ways of engaging children, using their own ideas, new technologies, gaming, film-making and interaction with their peers.
The ABC, she argues, must live up to its charter by using digital technology to support early childhood development, with new programs linked to the national early childhood curriculum. Programs for young children should be thought of in a different way from those aimed at older kids and the ABC is ideally placed to reach children in the home with quality programs designed both to entertain and educate them. Education policy and communication policy should be thought of together, not seen as separate issues.
'Too often, producers forget the child is the focus, not their own jobs. They shy away from the word 'educational' when in fact the media are the most potent and successful form of education there is. Even teachers ignore the potential of media to reach and teach children. It's time for a new paradigm of entertaining and educational media for children and a wiser use of available resources. But it will need new people, not the old guard, to make it work.'
