Joe Godwin

This interview was originally published in the MIPTV 2010 edition of TV Kids.

 

For 25 years the BBC has been providing children’s programming as a dedicated branded block—a block that was so successful it was spun off into separate digital channels: first CBBC, aimed at school-age children, and then CBeebies, for preschoolers. Joe Godwin has spent the past 20 years working in children’s media and last November was appointed director of BBC Children’s, a division that the BBC sees as one of its five key priorities.

 

TV KIDS: BBC Children’s has been serving children for many years. In the U.K.’s crowded TV landscape for children, what are CBeebies’ and CBBC’s mission?

GODWIN: The mission for both is very similar. CBeebies is for preschool children and CBBC for children aged 6 to 12, and both are an extension of the mission the BBC has had since the 1920s, which is to educate, entertain and inform. It’s very much about public service; it’s about encouraging children to be good citizens. It’s about inspiring them and their natural curiosity and opening their eyes to the world, because children are hungry for knowledge and want to understand the world, and both entertainment and factual programming can satisfy that curiosity. Our mission is very much to create memorable and inspiring content for children, which hopefully will stay with them forever and shape their outlook on the world and their lives. And within the context of the crowded market, it’s therefore about complementing the choice that they’ve got from other channels, and we’ve obviously got a key part to play in providing U.K. content.

 

TV KIDS: I often hear producers say that educational programming is fine for preschoolers, but once children start school the last thing they want when they turn on the TV is to see something educational. But where is it written that educational can’t be entertaining?

GODWIN: I would absolutely agree with that. I would also agree that it’s also about semantics. After working in children’s television so long I know that if you label a program “educational” it will be a turnoff. We’re not talking about educational with a capital E, we’re not talking about pedagogic television, we’re talking about programming that is entertaining and inspiring, but which has got facts that children use as currency: “Mum, did you know that…?” It’s a powerful thing, acquiring facts, and it’s just about how you dress it up. I think children want that, and at other times of the day they want to kick back and watch something that is just funny. So for us it’s about making sure they’ve got enough choice so that in their different moods, on different days, when they’ve got different needs at different points in their lives, they’ve got that range of programming to choose from.

 

TV KIDS: And is that range one of the things that the BBC has been able to offer that the competition has not?

GODWIN: We offer a huge range of programming that is designed primarily for British kids, which will help them grow up in Britain today, but also complements the large amount of non-British entertainment that our competitors offer.

 

Now, to be really clear about this, what our competitors do I think is fantastic. I worked at Nickelodeon, and the quality of what they do is amazing. I am not one of those people who say there is too much American TV for kids in Britain. I think it’s important that they’ve got choices that will fill their different needs, and we provide a lot of British content, and the range we offer is huge. On one end we do a daily news show for children, Newsround. It’s been airing for 40 years, and we now do several bulletins every day on our digital channel, and it’s got a fantastic website. We have our classic magazine program Blue Peter, which is all about exploring the world from a kid’s point of view. We do games shows. Now, why do we do game shows when the competition does game shows? Because these are about British kids, and I do believe that part of our mission is to reflect children’s lives back to them. So if you are a kid growing up in London or Manchester or Glasgow or Cardiff, it’s really important for your development as a British social being that you see people whose lives are like yours. Now, Hannah Montana is great, but her life probably isn’t very much like yours. It’s really important that we offer the children of Britain the chance to watch their own lives reflected back.

 

We also offer factual programs, really challenging factual programs. We’ve won awards for a program we did about children coping with bereavement. I don’t think there are many broadcasters in the world who make programs like that for children. We are the leading purveyor of programs like that in the U.K., and that is vitally important. Children need serious factual information and support, because life isn’t always easy being a kid, sometimes it can be quite challenging. It’s a big part of our mission and a big part of our remit to provide the factual information they need. We also do a lot of factual entertainment programs, which bring information and knowledge to children in a much more entertaining way. We do a lot of comedy, which isn’t frivolous although it is very funny and very high quality. Learning to understand comedy is a big part of growing up. Through comedy you can understand how relationships work, how the world works, and comedy in a very soft way can be a very important aspect to a child’s development.

 

At the other end of the spectrum we do lots of drama, ranging from fantasy dramas—The Sarah Jane Adventures, which is a spin-off from Doctor Who—to a fantastically successful drama called Tracy Beaker, based on the hugely popular Jacqueline Wilson novel. We also do very serious dramas as well, like Dustbin Baby, which has also won awards.

 

So our range is huge. Most of our programming is British—about half of it is made in-house by the BBC, about half is made by independent producers in the U.K.—and [the rest is] acquired. Given that there are 25 other children’s channels in the U.K., we offer a huge and completely comprehensive choice for kids.

 

TV KIDS: In what ways are you reaching children away from the TV screen, whether online or on mobile devices?

GODWIN: Online is very important for us and we are trying as much as possible, where appropriate, to commission multiplatform concepts, so that a brand can exist on both the web and on television. It’s not only TV programs with websites and information on them, but real immersive experiences on the web. We have a brilliant program called BAMZOOKi, which is a TV game show but it starts on the Internet, where kids can create their own creatures that can then take part in the TV show. There is a huge online community around the show that gives it a life beyond the television screen and also serves to create a whole lot of buzz. And to me that is the ideal of the multiplatform idea, where one brand has relevant executions on two platforms. We are always looking for new ways to do that.

 

TV KIDS: The BBC has announced that it will be investing some £25 million ($37.5 million) in children’s programming. Where is that money going?

GODWIN: We haven’t got the money yet, but it is going to [several] places. One, I would hope that we would use it to really enhance our drama, to do more episodes of existing series like Tracy Beaker and M.I. High, but also hopefully to do some new drama, especially about citizenship. A big part of our remit is about promoting positive, active citizenship amongst children, and I would hope we would use the money to commission some drama that has really got that as part of its mission. I’d also like to use some of it to enhance our factual programming. We do lots of fantastic factual programming. I personally would like us to do more about showing the wide world to children, to really explore what the lives of children in other parts of the world are like. And we’ll also use some of it so we don’t have to ask producers to find so much third-party funding in such a depressed economy.

 

TV KIDS: Are you seeing children gravitate more toward the digital channels and away from BBC One and BBC Two?

GODWIN: Yes, absolutely. There was a time when I first worked here 20 years ago, when there weren’t digital channels and we used to get huge, huge audiences on our BBC One afternoons. Nowadays, partly because of the fragmentation of the market, and the explosion of digital and partly because of the change in consumption patterns—TV isn’t all children consume now, it’s just one part of it—digital channels are by far the growing place.

 

TV KIDS: You’ve been in the children’s business many years. What do you enjoy most about it?

GODWIN: It’s a fantastic audience to work for. They are possibly the most critical. They are the most honest. They are the most open to new things. Like a lot of people who work in children’s television, I have extremely powerful memories of the importance of television to me as a child, and I’m a great believer that to a developing mind, high-quality television, whether it’s entertainment or factual programming or drama, can be extremely important. I find the prospect of doing that for today’s generation extremely exciting, and if we get it right, we have the potential of having a real impact on people’s lives. I haven’t gone on to a prime-time job be­cause I’ve never been of the view that children’s programming is a stepping-stone to prime time, but it’s ab­solutely an end to itself, it’sthe most satisfying—CBeebies and CBBC are amongst the greatest things the BBC does.