Director, Kindle Entertainment
“For fifty years UK kids have grown up with a range of vibrant, thought provoking, entertaining programmes made about them and their lives. All that is about change. From next year there will be very few, new, commercially funded kids’ programmes made in the UK unless we act immediately.
Kids’ programmes have traditionally been protected from commercial pressures by regulatory bodies (ITC, OfCom) because there has been an underlying assumption that the creation of content in the UK for UK kids was something valuable for them and for the cultural life of Britain as a whole. That is no longer the case. The regulation that does exist is weak, focusing on hours rather than spend.
Television production for kids will not survive in a world where the only yardstick used for its validity is ‘Does it make money?’
We need to convince both the public and politicians that Kids’ TV needs a new regulatory and funding framework if we are to continue to give Kids in the 21st Century the great characters, stories and windows on the world that UK kids have gained from TV over the past 50 years.”
Anne Brogan has worked at almost all the major children’s TV Production companies. Starting at Thames TV she moved to BBC Education and then Disney International. She has worked for Granada Kids since 1999, first as Head of Drama and then Controller, leading a thriving production department with a board slate of programming, spanning pre-school, animation, entertainment and drama. The drama portfolio includes the multi award winning My Parents are Aliens, now in it’s eighth series and frequently voted favourite kid’s show by the CiTV audience; Girls in Love, one of Granada International’s best selling teen series, and the phenomenally successful single drama, The Illustrated Mum, starring Michelle Collins, which won two Baftas as well and an International Emmy.
The closure of Granada Kids was announced in June 2006 following on from ITV’s decision not to commission any new children’s programmes from 2006. Anne is now Director of a new Independent Production Company, Kindle Entertainment.
