CMF's Colin Ward on an opportunity for change
By Colin Ward
19-08-2025
In an article written for the Children’s Media Yearbook, Colin Ward, research, policy and deputy director of the Children’s Media Foundation (CMF) discusses how the foundation has been working to bring about change in a crisis-ridden kids’ TV sector.
The Children’s Media Foundation’s long-running campaign to promote the value and importance of high-quality, public service media content for children has been a marathon, not a sprint. The core idea was present back in 2006, when we were called Save Kids TV and our message was perhaps a little simpler: children deserve the best television. It was an effective message that was asking policymakers to find ways to maintain the set of standards embedded in the public service broadcaster licenses and the Ofcom code.
As the sector became globalised, how could we ensure UK kids had access to a range of safe, quality media content – factual, entertainment, drama and animation – that reflected their own lives and the society they were growing up in. Basically, how would we stop people from serving up any old rubbish.
When you look at what has happened over the last, almost 20 years, you might be forgiven for thinking we’ve failed. In what has been a highly competitive environment, it is not surprising that most media businesses have prioritised commercial concerns and focused on entertainment content with a global appeal over UK-cultural content that embodies more traditional public service media values. So we have seen a steady decline in first-run, UK-originated content – particularly live action factual and drama – that is clearly age-appropriate and where the stories reflect our children’s lives and communities.
Our allies in the children’s production, platform and distribution sectors have fought against this decline and have never given up. The people working at BBC Children’s and S4C have continued to argue the case for quality media experiences for kids and have still managed to provide the audience with some wonderful content over the years.
Many commercial providers, like Sky, understand the importance of the UK family audience to their business and they also understand the ethical argument for producing life-enhancing children’s media experiences. Channel 5 has continued to invest in content for younger audiences for Milkshake! and Channel 4 has carved out its own niche trying to reach older teen audiences.
And let’s not forget the excellent work of the Young Audiences Content Fund, which brought much needed additional money into the sector and supported the development of businesses and new IP that has more than repaid the government’s initial investments.
Policymakers must not forget that the UK children’s media production sector has the creative skills and the talent to give young people the very best media experiences. But the sector urgently needs a solution to two interconnected problems: funding and finding.
Where will the money come from to make quality kids’ content when so many platforms are offering ‘free’, low-quality content that does not share our public service values. And how will the audience find the high-quality content that is made for them when they are being pushed to view lower-quality content that is more easily monetised.
Those are the problems the Children’s Media Foundation has been focused on over the last two years. After months of meetings with key stakeholders across the UK’s children’s media sector, we brought together broadcasters, industry associations and audience advocates at the Children’s Media Summit 2024.
The outcome of the summit was a set of policy documents we could then share with policymakers – including both the government and opposition parties – which brought together all of our shared concerns and proposed a range of solutions to tackle the ‘funding and finding’ problem.
Those documents informed amendments to the 2024 Media Bill, which we proposed through both the Labour and Lib Dem parties in both houses of parliament, calling for deeper investigation of the significant changes in viewing by the younger audience. These were not incorporated in the Media Act, but the stage had been set and it was satisfying to hear all three major political parties praise the foundation for the long-term work put into bringing the issue to public attention.
And then… there was an election and a change of government. The CMF had met with the new DCMS minister, Stephanie Peacock, before the election to discuss the policy proposals from the 2024 summit. We also had a good relationship with the secretary of state, Lisa Nandy, going back to when she worked with Baroness Benjamin
to set up the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children’s Media, which the CMF helped to co-ordinate. So, we asked for a meeting with the minister and eventually met with Stephanie and her team in December.
As it turned out, there was a lot happening in December. In our meeting with the minister, we emphasised the impact negative media experiences were having on children, citing the influence of Andrew Tate and the ‘manosphere’ on young boys, which was to become a major concern for policymakers as a result of the excellent drama series, Adolescence.
We spoke of the urgency of the problem and the need for additional funding to support public service media content, explaining the advantages and, also, the limitations of tax relief, along with the moral case for a levy on the businesses making profits from the children’s audience.
We stressed the importance of Ofcom’s role and asked for children’s media to be at the heart of their public service review. And we asked if government could speak with all the relevant parties – platforms, PSBs, the video-sharing platforms – to ask them to work together to resolve these issues.
Then, in that fallow period between Christmas and the New Year, the Today programme asked Baroness Floella Benjamin, a staunch ally of the CMF and an advocate for quality children’s media, to be their guest editor.
The show was fascinating in many different ways, but, from a CMF perspective, the most interesting moment was the interview with Lisa Nandy, where she confirmed she had written to the video sharing platforms to ask them to consider how they could make pro-social content more prominent. She also said she had written to Ofcom to ask them to give serious consideration to the children’s media experiences in their 2025 Public Service Media Review.
We followed that up in January with a meeting with Ofcom officials to find out how they were responding to the secretary of state’s request and we’ve had a number of meetings with them since then to talk about how we can work together to find solutions to the funding/finding problem.
We have also had further meetings with DCMS officials to ask about progress and were told there had been discussions with the key stakeholders to address the government’s concerns and a full report with a range of options will be shared with the ministerial team.
One of the things that was satisfying about our work this year was the feeling that we had turned a corner. Finally, after years of dogged persistence, constantly developing and refining our message, we found that we were pushing at open doors and would hear people saying many of the things that were first discussed in the CMF’s multi-authored, 2021 report, Our Children’s Future: Does Public Service Media Matter.
We know our influence is limited and every individual and organisation involved in this debate has its own ideas and agenda, but we can feel confident that the CMF’s campaigning work has helped to shape that debate.
For our next steps, we will be returning to the question of how we define ‘quality’ media experiences for children and what sort of system might be able to identify such content and ensure it is given greater prominence. Then we will be sharing those ideas with the DCMS.
We will also be responding to Ofcom’s Public Service Review, hoping to find practical options indicating how the government can create a regulatory framework that will improve the quality of children’s media lives. And we will be asking our supporters and allies to join us for a second Children’s Media Summit to discuss those proposals, which we are hoping to convene this autumn.
This year is an opportunity to bring about change. Everyone is now talking about what is wrong with children’s media experiences, so this is the time to propose solutions. It has been a marathon but, potentially, we could be on the last mile. Let’s get this done.
This article was written for the Children’s Media Yearbook, put together by the Children’s Media Foundation, and can be purchased here.
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