Our biggest new investment in children’s content and services for a generation
Children spent more time online than in front of the TV for the first time last year. That won’t be a surprise to most parents. We all know there is so much more competition for kids’ time and attention than ever before. From games and social networking to video on demand and music streaming services, children’s viewing of linear television is under serious pressure.
Today we’ve set out our response to this challenge, backed by the biggest new investment in children’s content and services in a generation — £34 million over the next three years. It means BBC Children’s budget will grow from £110 million to £124.4 million by 2019/20.
This new funding will enable us to deliver an enhanced online offer for children, with new forms of content and interactivity. In fact, we will be spending a quarter of the children’s budget online by the end of the decade. And the level of new funding means that we can do this at the same time as sustaining CBeebies and CBBC, the UK’s most popular children’s television channels.
The investment will go hand in hand with some major changes to the content we create; how we ensure our content reaches the audience; and the opportunities available to our audience to interact with our content online.
First, with so much competition for the media time of our audience, we need to make noisier content that stands out from the crowd — and that means a focus on fewer, bigger brands. It means making content to live in all the different places that kids expect — on tv, on demand, online, via apps, on social: a genuinely multi-platform approach to our brands. We’re also going to step up our commitment to teenagers, ensuring we create content for the whole under 16 audience.
Second, It’s not just what we make that matters, but how we get it to our audience. Children expect their favourite programmes and content to be delivered on demand, wherever and whenever they want it. We have already successfully launched iPlayer Kids, now downloaded 1.3 million times. We now want to ensure that iPlayer and iPlayer Kids are destinations in their own rights, not just a catch-up service — as important as our linear TV channels to our young audiences. So we’ll be offering more box sets, premieres and exclusives on iPlayer, while sign-in will enable us to make recommendations that match children’s individual passions and interests. It will also mean we can deliver age-appropriate content from across the BBC in one safe space via iPlayer and iPlayer Kids. And we’ll deliver content to teenagers via social media, where we know we can reach them.
Third, we are going to offer our audience new opportunities to interact with our content. We want children to be active creators and explorers, not just passive consumers. Our TV programmes have always had that ethos, but it applies just as much to kids time online too. Our hugely successful CBeebies Playtime Island app is already encouraging children to play and learn creatively, with new games and characters designed and influenced by children themselves. This year we have grown the popularity of our CBeebies Storytime app, including five exclusive new stories developed and read by Sir David Attenborough. In the coming months, we’ll deliver new interactivity online for older kids, including online games and creativity tools as well as new Dennis the Menace,Operation Ouch and Horrible Histories apps.
Creating content that stands out from the crowd, delivered wherever and whenever our audience wants it, with new opportunities to interact with our brands online. That’s our new plan for children — and it’s a fully funded plan thanks to the £34 million of investment announced today.
It will ensure the BBC’s commitment to informing, educating, entertaining and inspiring the UK’s children will continue, even as the way young audiences consume media fundamentally changes. And it will mean we really can deliver on our pledge to reinvent the BBC for the next generation.
Alice Webb is Director, BBC Children’s
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