BBC axes children’s shows from flagship channels

Will all mummies and grannies please leave the room. It might have entertained generations of children for more than 60 years, but Blue Peter, along with all the BBC’s other children’s programmes, will no longer be shown on BBC1 or BBC2.

The move is part of plans to cut hundreds of millions of pounds from the corporation’s budget by 2017, and recast its daytime schedule. The BBC Trust rubber stamped the proposals outlined in Delivering Quality First, but insisted that: “Children’s output remains a cornerstone of the BBC’s public service offering, and one of the BBC’s foremost editorial priorities.”

Switching to digital

At the moment, the BBC is required to show 1,500 hours of children’s programmes a year on the two flagship stations, but in future they will be only be shown on the two digital channels, CBBC and CBeebies. According to the Trust, only a small percentage of children watch their favourite programmes on BBC1 or BBC2 alone, and digital switchover means everyone will be able to access the other channels from the end of the year.

A spokesperson hastily denied the move was intended to downgrade Blue Peter, which is currently presented by Helen Skelton and Barney Heywood. “It is not being axed”, he said. “It is being moved to CBBC where it already premiers. The version on BBC One is a repeat. Our figures show that viewing figures on BBC One are falling, while those on the digital channels are growing.”

According to the BBC entertainment news team, Blue Peter gets an average audience of 123,000 children aged 6-12 on CBBC, while the BBC One repeat is only seen by an average of 30,000.

Blue Peter blues

The show, with its much sought after badge and enthusiastic teams of presenters, was once a mainstay of the early evening schedule, going out live twice a week throughout the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1990s it was being broadcast three times a week. Recently, though, audiences have been dwindling: last Friday’s show attracted 300,000 viewers, just 3 per cent of the total audience share.

Last year, the doyenne of Blue Peter, Biddy Baxter, who ran the show for more than two decades, warned against moving it on to a digital channel. “It would be quite wrong for it not to continue to be on BBC1”, she said. “It is vitally important that it stays on the channel, because it will attract more viewers”.

And Labour’s shadow culture minister Helen Goodman said she was deeply concerned about the move. “Pushing chidlren’s programmes down in this way does not fit with the BBC’s public service commitment,” she said, calling it a “real downgrading” in the priority they were giving to children’s viewing.

The BBC has promised to keep up the same level of investment in its youth offerings, citing highly popular shows like the Horrible Histories, which has drawn a substantial crossover audience among parents and young adults. The wildly successful Dr Who writer, Russell T Davies, has created an action adventure drama series for CBBC called Aliens Vs Wizards.

Davies, who began his career in children’s television, told the BBC: “Writing for children is the biggest challenge of all, and I think CBBC stands right at the heart of broadcasting.”

Viewer confusion?

The BBC admitted that such a wholesale change to its daytime output might result in confusion, but Trust chairman Lord Patten “Our focus now is to ensure that audiences notice as little change as possible to the service they know and love, and we will be monitoring audience reactions very carefully.”

But Greg Childs, from the Children’s Media Foundation, told Channel 4 News that there was a danger that family viewing would be affected, if children’s programmes were shifted from the mainstream on to a niche channel. “We do understand the logic behind the BBC’s decision”, he said, “but it’s about the symbolism: taking children out of BBC1 and BBC2 is not a good gesture.”

Mr Childs said he was worried there would be a temptation to cut budgets, despite the corporation’s assurances to maintain current levels of investment. “We will be missing out on connecting parents to what their children are watching…the bigger danger is that families will watch less, together.”

Or perhaps the current generation of children are already plugged into their computers and games consoles, constructing their own viewing schedules of must-view TV. It is a different world out there, compared to the days of Jackanory and Watch with Mother. Mummies and grannies have already left the room.