Children’s TV legend Baroness Floella Benjamin has said a ‘crisis’ in dedicated programming for youngsters is pushing them to adult material on YouTube ‘detrimental to their wellbeing’.
Ten years ago children used to watch two hours of TV on average but the rise of streaming services and video sharing sites like YouTube has seen that figure decrease by 70% in a decade.
Baroness Benjamin, who is guest editing the BBC’s Today program said that unless there was a push towards improving offerings for children the knock of effect on their welfare could be seismic.
She said: ‘I feel that children’s programs as know them are in crisis because children are migrating to online platforms and watching mainly adult material which for some could be detrimental to their wellbeing.
‘Children’s practitioners haven’t got the work or opportunity to be creative for young people: to show them their lives. They aren’t making things that show their lives. Where now is Grange Hill? Where now is Byker Grove? Where now is Tracy Beaker?
‘Where are all those shows that used to happen? It will be detrimental to the industry if we don’t have shows like this.
‘We used to have programs that were just there for children. The diversity of programs was vast.’
Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy has written to streaming sites to ask them to prioritise higher quality content.
She told the BBC: ‘The intention is that we would much prefer if they could work with us to make sure children are able to see and find more quality content easily.’
The broadcaster’s Director of Children and Education Patricia Hidalgo admitted that despite continued efforts to keep producing content for young people ‘the broader children’s media landscape is in decline’.
She explained that the industry is facing a ‘huge challenge’ to capture children’s attention by creating ‘original, culturally relevant content specifically for children’ amid the rise of online streaming and social media platforms.
Ms Hidalgo said: ‘The disappearance of commercial children’s TV channels and the loss of EU funding for kids’ programming has created a vacuum that public service broadcasters alone cannot fill.
‘This lack of market competition and investment means that much of the content consumed by children today is not made for them.’
She added that around a third of content watched by children on major streaming platforms is specifically made for them, meaning they are being exposed to inappropriate content.
It was announced in 2022 that CBBC – the BBC’s own children’s channel – would also move online in the new year following cutbacks.
Meanwhile, iconic television channel CITV was axed after 17 years on screens, with the broadcaster having moved its entire slate of children’s programming to its new streaming platform ITVX.
Explaining their decision to axe CITV, ITV bosses revealed the average amount of broadcast TV minutes of kids TV channels watched by 4-15 year olds per week had declined by 62 per cent since 2019.
They added that viewing figures on streaming figures had risen by 30 per cent in the same period.
The BBC on the other hand announced it was moving CBBC onto BBC iplayer as part of plans to become a ‘digital first’ broadcaster.
The changes mean the channels’ content such as Blue Peter and Horrible Histories will only available online.
The CBBC channel was launched in February 2002 alongside its sister channel CBeebies and has repeatedly been named Channel of the Year at the Children’s BAFTA awards.
Earlier this year Ofcom revealed that more than half of young people watch no traditional broadcast TV at all in a typical week.
Only 48 per cent of 16-to-24-year-olds tuned in to broadcast channels – or even their ‘catch-up’ services – in an average week last year, according to figures from the media regulator.
This is down dramatically from the 76 per cent of this age group that were watching in this way in 2018.
Ofcom’s Media Nations report found these Gen Z viewers watched just 20 minutes of live TV each day on average.
Instead, the study said this same age group spent more than an hour-and-a-half watching video-sharing platforms such as TikTok and YouTube each day.
Children aged between four and 15 were ‘tuning out at a similar rate’ with only 55 per cent of them watching traditional TV each week last year, as compared with 81 per cent in 2018.
Ofcom said younger people were ‘used to swiping and streaming’ rather than ‘flipping through broadcast TV channels’ and liked the ‘flexibility and immediacy’ that on-demand viewing gives.