BBC Children’s Alice Webb

Despite a wealth of competition, both linear and digital, BBC Children’s reigns supreme in the British kids’ market. Across CBeebies, CBBC and BBC iPlayer Kids, the British public broadcaster is serving its mission of educating, and entertaining, young audiences across all the platforms they are using. Alice Webb, the director of BBC Children’s, is committed to that public-service mission, which, she says, is more important than ever. Ahead of attending MIPJunior to speak about the role of children’s programming on public broadcasters, Webb shared with TV Kids her strategy for maintaining BBC Children’s ratings, and relevance, to British youth audiences today.

TV KIDS: What’s driving the overall success of the BBC Children’s portfolio?
WEBB: The simple answer is the content. I’m really proud of the range of content we have. It’s a real breadth. We’re still the most-watched and the most-loved [kids’ channels] in the U.K. The other thing that is helping us drive that is our ability to get content to children in the way they want it. BBC iPlayer was ahead of its time and it still continues to be right at the top end of video on demand in terms of the experience. We have a full-fledged kids’ version of it. So we’re making sure we have the right content and are getting it to children in the way that they want it.

TV KIDS: How is the dedicated kids’ iPlayer doing? What have you learned from the data there about how your audiences are interacting with your content?
WEBB: It’s really interesting. It works particularly well for the youngest audience. It’s only an app on mobile and tablets—it’s not on connected TVs—so it’s not on every device. We see week in and week out that iPlayer Kids is visited even more frequently than the main iPlayer. If you’re on iPlayer Kids, you love it even more than being on the iPlayer. There’s something that’s really working for that younger audience with iPlayer Kids.

TV KIDS: How are you using the data from both digital and linear to inform your programming decisions?
WEBB: That’s a really important part of what we do. We have a much broader range of measures that we look at because what represents value to us isn’t just money and eyeballs. We have a strong public-service remit, so it’s about making sure we’re delivering for everybody and that we have a broad range of genres. We judge our shows against lots of different criteria, which means that it’s as much art as it is science. There’s a good dollop of science in there, but of course, there has to be a good degree of art as well.

TV KIDS: Tell us about your programming teams’ efforts to source and develop content that is inclusive and reflective of all kids in the U.K.
WEBB: That’s a topic that is close to our hearts. We get a lot of recognition for the range of diversity that we have on our channels and in our content. It’s a natural part of what we do. Pablo features an autistic little boy. It’s a beautiful show that has captured the heart of the entire nation. Apple Tree House is from the same stable as Rastamouse. It’s live-action drama for CBeebies. It’s set in an inner-city tower block and has an incredibly diverse cast and, excitingly, a diverse crew as well. So it’s not just in front of the camera, but behind the camera, too. We’re pushing that. We have schemes to bring on new, diverse writers, and when I talk about diversity, that is literally in every direction. It’s not just about ethnicity or disability. We’ve had some powerful stories of kids who are discovering things about their own identity. We had a BAFTA-winning show about a transgender [child], My Life: I Am Leo. So [diversity is] completely part of our DNA and it’s almost hard to talk about it because it’s something that just happens.

TV KIDS: The BBC is one of the few backers of high-end children’s drama. What’s the key to getting it right, especially for preschoolers?
WEBB: We had a real desire to bring live-action drama to preschoolers, and boy have they rewarded us for that! They absolutely love those shows. We bring the same standards, the same expectations and the same craft to preschool as we do for our older children. A lot of our writers are writing for grown-up TV as well. The way we do children’s drama, it’s not about compromising, it’s not about dumbing down. We believe children deserve the very, very best. And I think that’s an ethos we’ve kept at our hearts. We’re expanding into the 12 to 16 bracket as well, so you’ll see some new dramas coming down the line there. It’s the age-old stories of rites of passage, loyalty, betrayal, finding your place in the world. Overall we are as exacting with our children’s dramas as we are with BBC grown-up dramas.

TV KIDS: Tell us about the importance of your factual productions. What have been some recent stand-outs for you?
WEBB: My Life holds a special place on CBBC for us because it is children telling their own stories. It never ceases to amaze me the emotional cut-through that children can get by telling their own stories, whether it’s I Am Leo or The Boy on the Bicycle or one about a child whose parents have Alzheimer’s. We have CBeebies factual as well. There’s Do You Know?, Maddie Moate’s show. And our Newsround service for children continues to be the gold standard. That has now gone international, so you’ll find versions in several countries in Africa. We got an incredible response nationally and internationally when we covered the Manchester Arena bombing last year. That whole sense of how you talk to children about these types of attacks, especially since that one was aimed at children [when terrorists bombed an Ariana Grande concert]. And then I have to mention Blue Peter, which is a flagship show and it’s about to be 60! I will be flying back from MIPCOM a couple of days early to attend the 60th birthday of Blue Peter, which by any standard is the most astonishing achievement.

TV KIDS: What do you think it is about that show that has allowed it to last for so long?
WEBB: I think it’s a world record for the longest children’s show ever. It could be the longest-running TV show ever. It’s still as relevant today as it was in the days that it started. It taps into everything and anything children are interested in, whether that’s a presenter skydiving in some daredevil way through to campaigning and saving the environment to learning a new sport. Literally everything. We have amazing competitions and of course the ability to win your Blue Peter badge, of which there are now quite a few! People like you and I spend a lot of time talking about the world of digital and what it means for children. We receive about 75,000 letters into Blue Peter every year. Kids are still engaging with it as much as they ever have done.

TV KIDS: What were some of the things you learned from your international compatriots at the Children’s Global Media Summit that BBC hosted in Manchester last year about the issues they are facing in their markets?
WEBB: One of the things that was a hot topic at the summit, which we’re all grappling with, is that our content lives on many different platforms in many different territories. As responsible content makers, we’re wrestling with, What if my content is on a platform that isn’t as responsible as I am? We had a big open forum devoted to this subject and what level of responsibility we should have as the content makers versus the platform providers. Nobody works in this business without a massive degree of love for our audience. We’d like to see that reflected more by some of the platform providers. As content creator and broadcaster and platform provider, we have that level of trust and safety and responsibility. We’d like to see that with others.

TV KIDS: What are your big-picture priorities for BBC Children’s in the year to two ahead?
WEBB: We’ll be bringing new shows to the channel and to iPlayer for the older age group. We’re going to be getting behind a smaller number of brands in a bigger way. Everybody is clear that if you’re going to break through a very busy, noisy landscape, you’ve got to have a fewer number of titles that punch above their weight. We’ll be doing that. I’m excited that we’re adding more ways for children to connect to the brands and the characters and stories they love. We’ve got apps for CBeebies around stories and games. We’re adding to that with new creative apps coming down the line. We’ve launched CBBC Buzz for that older age group. We’re increasingly doing more around kids’ online wellbeing. At the summit, we launched BBC Own It, which is a great website about helping kids to be empowered to own their online lives. You’ll see more from us in the next six months in that space.

TV KIDS: Can you give me a bit of a preview of what you’ll be talking about at MIPJunior concerning the importance of kids’ public-service broadcasting?
WEBB: Just that—the importance of it. And the fact that it’s more important than ever that there is a strong public-service broadcaster as a staple of a kid’s media diet. Making short-term decisions is easy. We all create a patchwork of funding to get a show made. And if we’re not careful, what we’ll be doing is selling our future. If we’re all reliant on big SVOD platforms, we risk finding we’ve sold our future and our ability to fund shows. Public-service broadcasting needs to make sure that it’s still funded well enough around the world to be a great partner.