Children's television: the soft underbelly of public service broadcasting

The provision of children's content should be a key constituent of the public service brand, but has often been viewed as a programme category at risk. Certainly in many countries children's television has moved from the 'scarcity' associated with terrestrial provision, to the 'plenty' of digital (see Ellis 2000). However in spite of a range of dedicated public service children's channels in Europe (CBeebies, Kika, Z@ppelin), domestically produced children's television in Europe is notoriously under-resourced if not marginalised. There is a pronounced reliance on imports (particularly on commercial television) notwithstanding the launch by US-owned multinationals (Disney, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network) of localised versions of their children's television channels in many European countries. Within the broader context of global developments in children's media, this paper starts by outlining the recent and rapid crisis in British children's television and the factors that caused it. This was a crisis, which caught broadcasters and producers by surprise in the middle of 2006, but reflects many of the challenges faced by the children's television sector in other countries. It clearly demonstrated how a combination of the lack of regulatory protection, a change in commercial priorities among broadcasters, advertising restrictions, budgetary pressures and the competitive environment at home and abroad all combined to reinforce the trend towards a contraction of domestic production. The crisis also served to underline the dominance of the BBC - both as a representative of public service principles, and as the dominant producer and commissioner in the market. With the reasons underpinning the crisis explained, the paper will then analyse how the children's television community responded to the crisis and with what effect. Based on interviews, contemporary accounts and documentary evidence the paper will chart the converging and diverging views of broadcasters, producers, regulatory authority Ofcom, and a range of advocacy groups which represent children's interests and the industry. What arguments were elaborated in favour of protecting children's television as an integral part of the public service media brand? Can lessons be learned about how best to ensure the origination of children's media within a public service environment? Can developments in the UK be used to provide insight into how children's media might develop further?

Making a difference? Public service broadcasting, distinctiveness and children’s provision in Italy and Spain

This article evaluates the performance of public service broadcasters in the area of children’s television in Italy and Spain. It asks: how distinctive is the output of public service children’s channels? As core area of public service provision, children’s television represents an important testing ground for wider debates about the distinctiveness of public service broadcasting in a digital age. Public broadcasters in Southern Europe have historically been more vulnerable to market pressure than their counterparts in continental and Northern Europe, and this is believed to have impacted negatively on their ability to maintain a distinctive public service profile. After engaging with debates on distinctiveness in order to develop a framework for the analysis, the article presents the results of a two-week analysis of the TV schedules of the main children’s channels operating in the two countries. It finds evidence that in both countries the output of public service children’s channels is distinctive to a degree, but also that there are important gaps in public service provision as well as some significant differences between the public service children’s channels analysed.

A computationally efficient DAB bit-stream processor

This paper describes an MPEG (moving pictures expert group) audio layer II - LFE (lower frequency extension) bit-stream processor targeting DAB (digital audio broadcasting) receivers that will handle the decoding of the frames in a computationally efficient manner to provide a synthesis sub-band filter with the reconstructed sub-band samples. Focus is given to the frequency sample reconstruction part, which handles the re-quantization and re-scaling of the samples once the necessary information is extracted from the frame. The comparison to a direct implementation of the frequency sample reconstruction block is carried out to prove increased computational efficiency.

The BBC's role in the changing production ecology of pre-school television in Britain

This paper examines the changing production ecology of British pre-school television in light of developments since the mid-1990s and the specific role played by the BBC. Underpinning the research is the perception that pre-school television is characterised by a complex set of industry relationships and dependencies that demands content which needs to satisfy a wide range of international circumstances and commercial prerogatives. For the BBC this has created tension between its public service goals and commercial priorities. Pre-school programming began in Britain in 1950, but it was not until the mid-1990s that Britain emerged as a leading producer of pre-school programming worldwide with government/industry reports regularly identifying the children’s production sector as an important contributor to exports. The rise of pre-school niche channels (CBeebies, Nick Junior, Playhouse Disney), audience fragmentation and the internationalisation and commercialisation of markets have radically altered the funding base of children’s television and the relationships that the BBC enjoys with key players. The international success of much of its pre-school programming is based on the relationships it enjoys with independent producers who generate significant revenues from programme-related consumer products. This paper focuses on the complex and changing relationships between the BBC, independent producers, and financiers, that constitute the production ecology of pre-school television and shape its output. Within the broader setting of cultural production and global trends the paper investigates the following questions: 1) In the light of changes to the sector since the mid-1990s, what makes pre-school television significant both generally and as an ideal public service project? 2) What is the nature of the current funding crisis in British children’s television and what implications does this crisis have for the BBC’s involvement in pre-school television? 3) How is the Corporation reacting to and managing the wider commercial, cultural, regulatory and technological forces that are likely to affect its strategies for the commissioning, production and acquisition of pre-school content?

Defining the nation, defining public television: discourses of publics on public service television in post-communist Latvia

Institutional and political economy approaches have long dominated the study of post-Communist public broadcasting, as well as the entire body of post-Communist media transformations research, and the enquiry into publics of public broadcasting has traditionally been neglected. Though media scholars like to talk about a deep crisis in the relationship between public broadcasters and their publics in former Communist bloc countries across Central and Eastern Europe, little has been done to understand the relationship between public broadcasters and their publics in these societies drawing on qualitative audience research tradition. Building on Hirschman’s influential theory of ‘exit, voice and loyalty’, which made it possible to see viewing choices audiences make as an act of agency, in combination with theoretical tools developed within the framework of social constructionist approaches to national imagination and broadcasting, my study focuses on the investigation of responses publics of the Latvian public television LTV have developed vis-à-vis its role as contributing to the nation-building project in this ex-Soviet Baltic country. With the help of focus groups methodology and family ethnography, the thesis aims to explore the relationship between the way members of the ethno-linguistic majority of Latvian-speakers and the sizeable ethno-linguistic minority of Russian-speakers conceptualize the public broadcaster LTV, as well as understand the concept of public broadcasting more generally, and the way they define the national ‘we’. The study concludes that what I call publics of LTV employ Hirschman’s described exit mechanism as a voice-type response. Through their rejection of public television which, for a number of complex reasons they consider to be a state broadcaster serving the interests of those in power they voice their protest against the country’s political establishment and in the case of its Russian-speaking publics also against the government’s ethno-nationalistic conception of the national ‘we’. I also find that though having exited from the public broadcaster LTV, its publics have not abandoned the idea of public broadcasting as such. At least at a normative level the public broadcasting ideals are recognized, accepted and valued, though they are not necessarily associated with the country’s de jure institutional embodiment of public broadcasting LTV. Rejection of the public television has also not made its non-loyal publics ‘less citizens’. The commercial rivals of LTV, be they national or, in the case of Russian-speaking audiences, localized transnational Russian television, have allowed their viewers to exercise citizenship and be loyal nationals day in day out in a way that is more liberal and flexible than the hegemonic form of citizenship and national imagination of the public television LTV can offer.

Media ‘Globalization’ as Survival Strategy for Authoritarian Regimes In the Arab Middle East

Sakr challenges the notion that transnational media technologies have forced states in the Arab Middle East to cede ever more control to non-state players since the 1990s. Taking account of a long history of foreign political engineering in Arab countries, she probes the realities of Arab broadcasting privatization, intra-regional harmonization of government communication policies, and external financial support for media freedom and reform, to show how Arab governments were large successfully in harnessing forces implicated in media globalization in a way that entrenched authoritarian elements of the status quo. The findings validate an alternative to globalization theory that places a dual focus on the agency of national ruling elites and the international structures that underpin the power of those elites today, as in the past.