David Weiland

October 2007

CBeebies’ mix of educational and entertaining shows has obviously delighted the preschool crowd in the U.K. In fact, the BBC’s service is the number-one children’s channel in the U.K., a country that has more than 20 channels targeting youngsters. CBeebies is wholly owned by BBC Worldwide, which has begun taking the channel’s successful formula and launching services around the world. David Weiland, the head of programming for Global Channels at BBC Worldwide, talks about CBeebies’ shows, its website and plans for extending both internationally.

TV KIDS: What was the motivation for expanding CBeebies beyond the U.K.? What makes it have international appeal?

WEILAND: When we looked at our strategy for global channels outside the U.K., we looked at genres in which the BBC was exceptionally strong. In the U.K., the BBC has two children’s channels: CBeebies, the preschool channel, and CBBC, which is for 6- to 12-year-olds. CBeebies has been on the air for more than five years now. It’s been the number-one channel in the U.K. and we’ve got a very competitive children’s market here with 23 different channels. It has about three-and-a-half times the ratings and share of its nearest competitor. So we knew CBeebies was very strong, and in looking around the world there seemed to be a bit of a gap in the preschool market. Naturally there’s Nick Jr. and there’s Playhouse Disney, but often they are [blocks] on the larger Nickelodeon or Disney channels. And some markets don’t have any dedicated preschool channels. We just thought there was a real opportunity because of the quality of CBeebies’ programming and of the proposition; that’s really important—it has an educational base to it. In certain markets there was a real demand and need.

We did quite a lot of research in each of the markets we’ve been looking at. We’ve done focus groups—and obviously we were mostly talking to parents of small children—and when we demonstrated CBeebies’ programs and the whole proposition, people reacted incredibly positively to it. I think that comes out of two things: one was that, increasingly, they are getting concerned about the fact that, particularly on animation channels, there’s quite a lot of violence. Parents say little kids are getting nightmares. And they seem to grow up more quickly these days and television is influencing that. CBeebies takes them back to that real age of innocence, but also a real age of learning, and people really appreciate that educational angle.

TV KIDS: What must a program have in order to be good enough for CBeebies?

WEILAND: It needs to have an educational element, that’s the key thing. CBeebies is targeting kids up to the age of 6, and that’s actually quite a wide [age span], so there’s a range of different programming. For the very young viewers—18 months to about 3 years old—it’s all about those early developmental needs: language, counting, exploring the outside world. We like all the programs for that age group to have one of those elements. Teletubbies has exploration. Tweenies is all about dance and making things and storytelling. The Roly Mo Show is about exploring the world through reading, and we’ve got a new show called Numberjacks, which is all about numbers.

What we try to do with our portfolio of programs and brands is have a balance between live-action, puppets and animation. And again, looking at the market, most of the other channels that cater to this segment are very heavily skewed towards animation and pure entertainment—cartoons for the very young. Some of them are absolutely fantastic, but [several channels] have tended to steer away from puppets and live action and we think that’s a gap that can work well for us.

TV KIDS: How do you decide which show is best suited for which part of the day?

WEILAND: There are two things [we take into consideration] when we schedule. One is looking at what activity is going on in the household at a given time, and secondly we look at the age range of the young viewers. We want to group together our programs that are targeted at the very young and then pick up the 4- and 5-year-olds at different times of the day.

In the early morning it’s all about quite simple and gentle things, people are getting up, and usually the smallest person in the family might have just been dumped in front of the TV while all this activity is going on. Something like Teletubbies works very well early in the morning.

During late morning and around lunchtime are the times when kids may be at home painting, drawing or doing some sort of activity. And we have shows about cooking or art that fit very well there.

It depends on the territory, but traditionally, after lunch there may be a nap going on, the older kids might be coming home if they’ve just been in school for the morning. So there is a mixed schedule in the afternoon. And leading up to bedtime it gets gentler, calmer and storytelling takes over.

TV KIDS: Even for children this age, is it important to support the channel and its programs with online and other new media or are they too young?

WEILAND: No, I think it’s really important for this age group. It’s true that independent computer and mouse control happens with slightly older children, 5-, 6- and 7-year-olds. But even for the very early years, it’s not so much that the program has to have its own microsite. We’re taking characters from the shows that children are familiar with and using the online space to create other things. Just to give you an example, Teletubbies [doesn’t have] a huge website [featuring] stories or the characters, but there are a lot of pages in black and white that can be printed. So that’s not necessarily always material that you [access] with a keyboard and a mouse, but it’s a resource for things to be printed out and then worked with in a more traditional way. Kids like drawing and painting and other activities. And this is becoming increasingly more and more important.

Internationally we are in the process of looking at our online strategy. We’re working very closely with the BBC in the U.K. and the CBeebies website and hope to have something launching in the near future.

TV KIDS: What territories are you targeting for CBeebies?

WEILAND: The first launch was in India, and that was in May. We’ve launched also now in Singapore, and we hope to roll out pan-regionally across Asia.

There are a couple of markets [we are looking at] across Europe and Africa and other continents. So I would say hopefully by the early part of next year we may have four or five CBeebies channels up and running.

TV KIDS: Internationally are you seeing the same pattern you’ve witnessed in the U.K. where CBeebies is the most-watched of the BBC’s digital channels after news and sports, or is it too early to say?

WEILAND: It’s probably still too early to say. In a lot of markets where we are launching we’re not getting 100 percent ratings day to day. In terms of anecdotal press reaction, CBeebies is proving very, very popular and everybody welcomes it, because it is offering something slightly different.

The U.K. channel is a 13-hour channel and is on the air until 7 p.m. The last hour of CBeebies is what they call the bedtime hour. I have a scheduler working on our international channel who used to work at CBeebies U.K. He was telling me a story about how a year or so ago they looked at changing the bedtime hour. But there was such an outcry from parents, saying it’s fantastic and this is a signal for all the kids to start to get a bit mellow, and when the channel’s bedtime hour came to an end, that was it, it was bedtime, which was perfect.

And we are trying to recreate that in some of our markets as well. Obviously our main focus is the children, but a really important secondary audience is parents and caregivers. If we can make sure that they value us as well and we can help them through what is a very difficult job—parenting, especially at that age—that will also benefit the channel as a whole.

We have research that shows that a channel like CBeebies really does help broaden children’s knowledge and affect their spatial aptitude.