Speech given to Showcomotion Young
People's Film Festival
Saturday 8 July 2006
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Hello and thank you for welcoming me to the conference today.
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I'm Richard Deverell, the Controller of ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's. I joined the department
about a year ago as Alison Sharman's deputy. A lot can happen in a year!
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Personally, I've learnt an enormous amount. Children's is very different to ´óÏó´«Ã½
News where I spent ten years.
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I've been struck by the sheer diversity of what
the ´óÏó´«Ã½ and other broadcasters provide for children and the passion and
commitment of the people who work in this area.
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I've also learnt that it's a lot
more competitive than ´óÏó´«Ã½ News; audiences have more choice, the market is more
fragmented. We all have to work hard to attract the best talent and to win the
attention of children.
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Most of all, I've been struck by just how enjoyable it is to be working in an
area where – in essence – our remit is to delight children. Ideally, to do so
with wonderfully distinctive and original ideas that enrich, engage and enthral
them.
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I have a simple remedy to cheer myself up whenever the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s "complexities" get
me down. All I do is to visit a programme that has a live audience or children
participating. They are what it's all about.
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To me, the most powerful thing about television has always been its ability to
open someone's mind to new horizons – to open new worlds. Nowhere is this more
important than for children.
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Everyone in this room will have different constraints and frustrations about what
they do. However, we are united in one thing – and that is that we are offering
children the very best television programmes and interactive content.
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At ´óÏó´«Ã½
Children's we aspire to excellence in everything we do.
And I know all of you here today would share this ambition to aim high – the ´óÏó´«Ã½
has no monopoly of virtue.
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Looking back over the past years' agendas for Showcommotion it's interesting to
see how the discussions have evolved but the themes of the conference remain
fairly constant.
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By this I mean no offence to Greg and the Showcomotion team. I
believe that we are grappling with the same emerging issues as two years ago when
the topic was a World Without Schedules.
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This examined how PVRs, Video on
Demand and non-terrestrial channels are sweeping away children's reliance on the
schedule.
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Last year the themes included whether new technology is changing
childhood, how personal choice will affect how we deliver content and how to
embed cross-media into programming.
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What I want to do today is to build on these themes by describing my view of the
way in which the environment for our programmes and services will change
profoundly in the coming five years and to outline some of the ways that we might
prepare for this very different world.
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As many of you will know, the ´óÏó´«Ã½ has
been working on a vision of this, called Creative Future, over the past year,
which has some clear recommendations for each area, and will have an impact on
the way we organise ourselves going forward.
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Today, I want to describe the fully digital world that, I believe, is maybe five to 10
years away.
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Those of us working in Children's media will be the first to enter
this very different world. At ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's we've been explicitly asked to
pioneer a lot this work for the ´óÏó´«Ã½.
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I'll return to the point of partnership,
but I will emphasise that we simply cannot do this without the help of a strong
independent sector.
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And we simply do not want to do this without a thriving
children's media industry.
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Anything that curtails the healthy competition
curtails our ability to deliver for our audiences now and in the future. And
that is bad for the media industry as a whole.
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I believe we are on the cusp of a revolution. A revolution that is being driven
by three powerful forces:
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- The rise of on-demand consumption
- The proliferation of media devices
- The emergence of participatory media as a mainstream phenomenon
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This will be a world where audiences will face limitless choice; where anyone can
create or distribute video, audio or text and where broadband access to content
is near-ubiquitous.
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For many, this world will be exciting; for some it will be
daunting and others will be excluded.
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It is a hugely exciting time to be working in media – particularly, media for
Children. This is because children are, to a large extent, already in this new
world.
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Also the habits they adopt as children will, I believe, remain with them
and therefore will, over time, become the new mainstream.
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I will talk about each of these three in turn –
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The rise of on-demand consumption
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I believe that the most important change facing our business in the coming decade
will be the move from broadcasting to on-demand as the way much, if not most, of
our content will be consumed.
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What do we mean by on-demand? We mean that programmes will be watched or
listened to at a time chosen by the audience – not by us as broadcasters.
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Once upon a time, way back in 1922 we had the first ´óÏó´«Ã½ radio services
and for television in 1936 with the first transmissions of what became ´óÏó´«Ã½ ONE. We
might call this an age of linear channels and limited choice.
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Then came the age of the proliferation of choice. This started in 1989
with the launch of multi-channel TV from BSB and Sky. 1995 saw the arrival of
digital radio.
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And now, we might say that we are in the third age - the age of on-demand: This is the fully digital world where on-demand is a mainstream way by
which people consume video and, to a lesser extent, audio. In addition,
increasing amounts of media consumption will be via portable devices. This is a
world of near infinite choice and global competition.
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The impact on broadcasting of this third age is an earthquake compared with the
mild tremors that marked the transition to multi-channel.
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My apologies to those who have heard me use this analogy before – but I believe
children of the future will look back at our linear, scheduled TV world with some
bafflement.
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It seems to me the way we currently provide television is rather
like going to Tesco in search of – say – Colgate toothpaste only to be told "I'm
sorry, we only stock Colgate Toothpaste between 7.30 and 8.00pm on Wednesdays and
if you missed it then it's gone for ever". That's how we package most of our
best television programmes.
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But, it is not, of course, how iPods, or Amazon, or games consoles or Google
video work.
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- Ever faster broadband is fundamental to the rise of on-demand
consumption.
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Today about 45% of UK children have access to broadband. That is growing
rapidly. And broadband used to mean 500kb/sec – that was fast enough for text
web pages but painful for video.
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Increasingly broadband means 3mb/sec – or much
faster. There is a poster at the end of my street offering me broadband access
at 18mb/sec and the best offers around offer 24mb/sec for less than £20 a month.
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Back in 1995 someone showed me how you could download video files over the
internet. I was shown a postage-stamp sized flickering image that froze
regularly and had appalling sound.
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Everyone else watching this was gasping with
wonder but I thought – "this is crap – why would you want to watch that?" But,
what amazes me now is how fast things have improved.
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Last year – ten years after my moment of disappointment – I was in Seattle at
Microsoft. They showed me a commercial service that is up and running in the
States that delivers high definition movies over the broadband internet direct to
your living room TV.
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This is a live service – not a technical trial carefully
crafted by Microsoft's finest engineers.
I was amazed at the quality of what I was seeing – it happened to be one of those
magnificent battle scenes from the first Lord of the Rings film. And it was all
in glorious high definition.
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This is the leap the internet has made within just
one decade. What will the next decade bring?
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Broadband will be truly revolutionary. It enables the distribution of TV-quality
video via totally open networks. And it is "always on". It liberates content
from the limitations of schedules, professional content creators and geography.
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My prediction is that the broadband web will be the most disruptive technology
the television industry has ever witnessed.
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Another major factor in the increase in on-demand is the increase in local
storage. By "local storage" I mean systems that store content on set top boxes
or portable devices such as Sky Plus and iPods.
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Sky Plus, currently in around one-and-a-half million UK homes, is growing rapidly. Their latest box offers 120
hours of TV capacity.
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If current trends continue, this will be 1,000 hours
within five years. To put that in context, that is almost all the peak time
programmes from your five favourite channels from the last year.
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Imagine the
space that would have occupied if you'd been trying to keep it all on VHS! Put
simply – this is vast choice.
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So what are the implications...
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For starters these technological changes are forcing new alliances – often
creating odd bedfellows of the old and the new.
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NBC has formed what was
described as an "uneasy alliance" with YouTube to promote their television
programmes.
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Brightcove – a company providing tools to distribute video over the internet –
have teamed up with TIVO – a leading PVR service to enable internet distributed
video to go directly to the set top box, so you don't have to have any technical
knowledge to be able to watch stuff from the web on your TV.
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How long before Sky
strikes a similar deal in the UK?
Sky announced a few months back that broadband is their top priority this year
and they have warned analysts they will spend £70-£100m building their position
in this market.
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And, Sky delivers – they have a formidable track record on
technical innovation and customer service.
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On-demand also challenges concepts of broadcaster and producer - RDF media have
announced that they will be the first indie to offer programmes directly to
audiences via broadband from the end of this year.
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On-demand provides audiences with far greater choice and new forms of content.
It affects the kind of content we need to create and how we'll package and
distribute it.
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For example, programme duration can be editorially determined rather than
dictated by the needs of the schedule. This is an opportunity.
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We also need to
think about the quality throughout a programme, and how it will be broken down to
be consumed.
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Think about albums – who now would listen to the filler tunes –
it's the two or three favourites which will be on your playlist.
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Similarly we
shouldn't assume that the audience will want to watch our programmes the whole
way through.
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I think there will be a flourishing of short-form content – the most popular
clips on YouTube tend to be less than three minutes in duration.
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And of course this
will be driven by different distribution methods too as the resurgence in
shortform animation, for web and now mobile, is starting to indicate.
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For content creators there is yet another challenge in the sudden emergence of
content created by audiences. FlickR had 55 million photos posted within its
first year, and it's a truism that a blog is created every second.
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And user-generated content is becoming the next big thing in computer gaming, according to
Sims-creator Will Wright.
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Life certainly is getting more complex!
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The proliferation of media devices and gateways
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The second trend is the proliferation of media devices.
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It used to be simple – children had access to just a television, typically the
family set in the living room.
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Today almost nine out of ten children have their
own listening equipment (ie, a CD player, radio or MP3 player), and more than a
quarter own all three.
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Almost three quarters of children have internet access at
home, and more than a third have their own PC or laptop.
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The numbers for games
consoles are still rising with 85% owning one, whilst almost all children over
ten years old have their own mobile.It's not just the older age-group either –
30% of 7-8 year olds have one too.
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And... perhaps most surprisingly one in eight
children has their own fridge in their room!
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We did some research recently asking what children would like from the media recently
and at lots of different ages they came up with some great pictures of integrated
devices.
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Phones with big screens that let you MSN your friends whilst watching
television or, to quote from some research Showcomotion did last year, children
want "one mobile type device that will do everything for me".
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Their wish is coming true. Within five years portable media devices will be
ubiquitous. Most will have radio, live television, local storage, broadband
connectivity and GPS enabling the delivery of location-specific content.
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Children will increasingly regard BT, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft as some of the
main paths to television and radio content.
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In general, there will be a
proliferation of ways to access content. Many children will use user-ratings or
other forms of recommendations. Sophisticated software will enable tailored
services that actively seek out relevant content.
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There will be only a few mass-market aggregators of content but these will be complemented by a large number
of others catering for niche interests.
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Standard definition TV will be regarded as the poor relation to high-definition.
The latter will be widely available, including via broadband.
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Meanwhile physical formats for media distribution (CDs, DVDs etc) will have been almost
entirely replaced by digital download.
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Many of the new devices will be portable and personal. This brings opportunities
for targeted and tailored content.
Much of this is not new – you know this.
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But, to me there are two big points
here.
The first is that in the child's mind there is equality across all these devices
that we as adults may never understand fully.
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This is already happening. For
example, every month 1.4 million children watch the C´óÏó´«Ã½ digital channel but four million use the
C´óÏó´«Ã½ website. Audiences to the latter are growing far faster than for the
former.
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The second point is that we, as content creators and commissioners, have to focus
on great ideas first and distribution media second.
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Great ideas can, and should,
work across all relevant platforms and devices. I'll talk more about this in a
moment.
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The emergence of participatory media
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The third trend is the emergence of participatory media.
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By participatory media I mean the ability of children to create their own content
or to manipulate or interact with content we, as professionals, have originated.
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Whether writing their diaries or posting in their blog on Bebo, children have
been content creators since time immemorial. So it should be no surprise that one
in six children already have their own website.
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We, working in the children's sector, are incredibly well placed to capitalise on
this trend. We have a 60 year heritage of asking children for their stories,
their pictures or even their monsters.
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I wanted to show a recent example from CBeebies where, as part of Space Week,
more than 5,000 children sent in their pictures.
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RUN VT
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I think that's a particularly nice example because it demonstrates how the
simplest activities can generate fantastic television, and give even our youngest
audiences the opportunity to see their creations on screen.
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Involving the
audience is totally engrained in the culture of children's programme-making.
Even people of my generation will remember the anticipation each week as the
camera panned across Tony Hart's gallery on Take Hart, hoping against hope that
their picture would appear.
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I think we're getting more sophisticated at using
this type of send in or competition too.
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More ambitious was Blue Peter's
competition to design one of the monsters in the last Doctor Who series. This was
won by nine-year-old William Grantham who came up with the rather horrific
Absorbaloff... who, like a giant amoeba, simple absorbs his enemies. If only it
were that easy!
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Those of you who saw this on Doctor Who will remember it was the
comic but still very scary character played by Peter Kay. Let's have a look.
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RUN VT
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So whilst we need to adapt to the new media – audio and video – in which children
are working, we do not need to adapt culturally. We are already highly receptive
to their creativity.
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This world is not without problems. We need to ensure we provide secure areas
for children, free from access and abuse and inappropriate material. We have
responsibilities.
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These three trends – the rise of on-demand consumption, the proliferation of
media devices and the emergence of participatory media will, in concert, change
our business profoundly.
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But don't' take my word for it, to understand this changing world you have to ask
the people who use it. So I'm delighted to introduce Callum who's sent this via
his webcam.
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RUN VT
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Thank you Callum, yes we are listening.
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Implications of these trends
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So, what are the implications of these changes and what should we do to prepare
and succeed in this world? The truth, of course, is that I don't know.
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But, in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ there is an odd aversion to ever admitting you don't have an
answer. So I feel obliged to share my best guesses on some priorities for the
fully digital world.
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So, with some trepidation, here are my four tips for
success – but I feel the need, as with those ads for financial services on radio,
to bolt on a stream of disclaimers and caveats!
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To me, the most important requirement will be a relentless pressure on innovation
and creativity. In a world of great choice only the truly distinctive will
register.
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This applies as much to presenters as programmes.
This is why, in our commissioning rounds at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's, we are placing great
emphasis on ideas that bring outstanding originality and distinction.
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Television programmes and other forms of content that fail to intrigue, delight,
surprise or satisfy will simply be invisible. They need to be the sort of thing
that you wouldn't expect for children – only the brilliantly unexpected will
stand out.
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It is also why, in some areas, we will reduce the number of titles we commission
but aim to increase the impact, quality and run of those that are commissioned.
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For example, in Drama, last year we commissioned 12 titles; this year we are
aiming at nine.
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To me, Serious, LazyTown, Balamory, Tracy Beaker, Beat the Boss, Dick ‘n Dom,
Charlie and Lola, NewsRound with it's Press Pack, Level Up, to name but ´óÏó´«Ã½
examples are all titles that absolutely create impact and loyalty with viewers.
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They achieve this because they capture the attention of children by being
original and distinctive and they capture their loyalty by the excellence of
their storytelling and production.
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Later today we will broadcast That Summer Day – a docu-drama produced by Hat
Trick and directed by Jon East that looks at the impact of the London bombings
last July on the lives of children in a north London school.
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It is a wonderfully
original idea that has been thoughtfully and sensitively brought to life. It's a
difficult and unorthodox subject for children but I mention it today as, to me,
it is a great example of the ´óÏó´«Ã½'s commitment to innovation and originality for
children.
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The initial idea was inspired by the huge amount of traffic to our
message boards that day and we researched it with children like those in the
film, so it's a real example of putting children at the heart of what we do.
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My second tip for success in the fully digital world is to adopt a multi-platform
approach to content creation.
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From what I said earlier, children will be the
first to move seamlessly across many different devices to access content. So
they will expect us to offer services across all these devices and to do so in a
joined up and compelling way.
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Level Up, shown in the earlier clip, is a great example of how a television
programme and a website can each strengthen the other – with children and their
ideas as the glue binding these two together.
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Crucially, it was conceived as a
pan-platform proposition. Too often we have good ideas for television programmes
with an "interactive bit" crudely bolted on as a late after-thought.
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We have to
move beyond that approach. It's not necessarily receiving the highest ratings,
but it's a great experiment for many reasons, not least the traffic to the
website and the blogs we are trialing.
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Recently I was shown a fascinating example from Holland called the Blackbeard
Connection that married the best of linear TV drama with a rich, immersive online
world where players competed to solve clues to solve the mystery of the location
of Blackbeard's last treasure.
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I would love the ´óÏó´«Ã½ to innovate further with
this interplay of web and TV content – building on the unique strengths of each
medium. We need great ideas!
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The requirement for a pan-platform approach to content creation was the main
reason why I introduced two Creative Directors at ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's: Anne Gilchrist
for C´óÏó´«Ã½ and Michael Carrington for CBeebies. Their role is to commission across
all platforms for their respective services.
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It is also why we are creating pan-platform production teams. The latest example is NewsRound where we have
recently appointed a single editor to run a unified team producing content for
TV, web, radio and iTV.
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Tip number three is about talent. Invest in it. Nurture it. Love it.
This industry is nothing without the ideas, energy and commitment of its people.
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The competition for talent – especially production talent - will become ever more
intense.
We are all chasing outstanding ideas. At ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's I want to attract the
most talented and exciting creative people.
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I am keen to draw in more people
from grown-up TV – they can learn more, faster in ´óÏó´«Ã½ Children's than in any
other ´óÏó´«Ã½ department. We can offer them great opportunities.
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We've also, by the
way, been commissioning from indies who have had no previous children's
production experience, so this applies across the board.
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I want to move people around more to ensure they have a greater diversity of
experience. In particular, I want to ensure people work on interactive and on-demand services.
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There will be a premium on those who understand the creative
opportunities made possible by new technology.
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We are thinking hard about novel
ways to develop and reward our people and to ensure we attract people from a full
diversity of backgrounds.
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We still have much to do on the latter.
We need to challenge our assumptions about production talent: are technical staff
the new "creatives"?
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It's striking that Yahoo, eBay, Friends Reunited,
Wikipedia, MySpace, BeBo and many more were all started by what we – in media -
would call "technical" people.
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I believe successful media organisations will
deliberately blur these distinctions and ensure that the brightest and best
software engineers work in integrated teams alongside traditional television
production staff.
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We in the children's media industry should be at the forefront
of this.
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Marketing and findability
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My final tip is to invest in marketing. By marketing I don't mean trails and
posters.
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I mean understanding your audiences and ensuring they understand what
you are offering and can find it amidst this ocean of choice.
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As children's media habits change we are going to have to work harder to
understand their world. By this, I don't mean fat surveys full of columns of
numbers.
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I mean really valuable and granular insights that tell us about what
matters to children – how they behave and what they aspire to. These original
insights will be the fuel for effective creative development of great ideas.
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In a world of near-limitless choice search, personalisation and recommendations
from friends will all become important routes used by busy children to find the
content they want.
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All of these require content to be effectively labelled and described – yes,
metadata as the boffins call it, is really is a core part of your business now.
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Not only do we as professionals need to label our content but we need to let our
audiences describe and rate it too.
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It is impossible not to be impressed by the
ease with which you can find relevant photos on Flickr – yet all of that indexing
has been done by the public.
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We are only just starting to scratch the surface of
what we might do with this "social tagging".
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We need to invest in the
technical systems that will enable us to do this and we also need to take the
rather large cultural step – it certainly feels a large step in the ´óÏó´«Ã½ - to open
ourselves up in this way. But the opportunities here are intriguing.
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One final thought. I believe that organisations that succeed will be those that
offer consistent, simple and effective services. They will know exactly what
their brand stands for – and so will their consumers.
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We are working hard to
define the brand positioning for both C´óÏó´«Ã½ and CBeebies and then to ensure this
is consistently realised across all the relevant content and communication.
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In particular, despite the success of the C´óÏó´«Ã½ brand, it has the potential to
feel a little confused – and confusion is a dangerous place to be in this
competitive market.
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We need to sharpen it up and we also need to ensure it is
spot-welded to our programmes so that, whether you find Raven on ´óÏó´«Ã½ ONE, Google
video or – illegally – on a Lord of the Rings fan website, you will know it came
from C´óÏó´«Ã½.
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Partnerships
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Finally, the foundation for many of the points made in this speech is the need
for us to have strong and effective partnerships.
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We cannot and will not
succeed in this starkly different world if we try to go alone.
We need many partnerships – for example, with Google to ensure our video and
websites are findable and with mobile operators to ensure ready access to mobile
content.
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However, there is one partnership that is faraway the most important –
and that is with the indies and other content suppliers. The creative
excellence from independents is as fundamental to our business as that from in-house.
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Our approach to commissioning is that the best idea should win. Early
indications are that the independent sector will have won more than 40 per cent
of our commissions for 06/07 – if not a majority, a very significant part of our
business.
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I want to reiterate that I believe in a vibrant and successful commercial sector – both broadcasters and indies – it is an important factor in sustaining our
drive for excellence.
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We want to move into this "third age of broadcasting" with
strong companions taking the journey with us. It will be an uphill climb if we
try to take it alone.
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Conclusion
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I've argued today that the transition to this fully digital world on-demand world
presents all of us with some complex challenges. It's easy to feel daunted.
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But, to me, it is more exciting than daunting. This world offers wonderful
opportunities to innovate, to experiment and to learn.
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For the first time we can
engage in a creative dialogue in which children are active, inspired
participants.
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I am confident we can offer richer, more engaging, illuminating
and entertaining formats and treatments in the 21st century than we ever managed
in the 20th.
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We have to be nimble – to be a bit more confident with risk and uncertainty. We
need to embrace experimentation – and maybe spend a bit more on audience research
and pilots. But the prizes merit the effort.
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I have argued that much will be different in this new world – but I want to end
by stressing that actually, the most important thing will not change.
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This, of course, is our collective ability to create and deliver great ideas that capture the imagination of young minds.
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Great ideas are, and will remain, the bedrock on which all our successes are built.
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And the children who consume, interact with and produce our content will be the final judge of those successes. Thank you.
