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U.K. Government Shuts Down Young Audiences Content Fund

January 24, 2022 Kristin Brzoznowski

The U.K.’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport (DCMS) has decided not to continue the Young Audiences Content Fund (YACF), after concluding a three-year pilot program.

“We are incredibly proud of what the BFI Young Audiences Content Fund has achieved in three years,” the closure statement reads.“It has given young people all over the U.K. the opportunity to watch and engage with original U.K. programming on free-to-access, regulated platforms, reflecting their lives, hopes and fears and educating, entertaining and inspiring them.

“The Fund has supported the U.K.’s production community, enabling greater opportunity and creativity with 144 development projects, many of which have converted to broadcast commissions already, and 55 productions—ranging from Teen First Dates (E4) to sustainable craft show Makeaway Takeaway (CITV) and The World According to Grandpa (Milkshake!), as well as new projects in indigenous languages such as Sol—a film on grief created for the Celtic languages Irish (TG4), Scottish Gaelic (BBC ALBA) and Welsh (S4C), with more awards still to be made in the closing weeks of the Fund. YACF-backed projects have already drawn critical acclaim, won a string of awards and secured sales to countries around the world, and there are 24 projects in production still to air over the next two years.

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“Research and recommissions demonstrate that these programs have a high level of appreciation from young audiences, and we hope the Fund’s legacy will be to encourage U.K. broadcasters to continue to focus on programs that nurture and nourish and reflect the lives of young people in the U.K.”

The Children’s Media Foundation (CMF) has released a statement about the closure, saying it considers the move “a short-sighted failure on the part of the policymakers” at the DCMS and called upon Secretary of State Nadine Dorries to reverse the decision. It has suggested that the budget underspent by the Fund—largely due to the slow-down in production caused by Covid—that was taken back by the DCMS just under a year ago could be reinstated to grant a two-year stay of execution.

The CMF proposes that a levy on streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, Disney+ and YouTube combined with enhanced Lottery Funding could finance the Fund in the future.

CMF Chair Anna Home OBE said: “The Young Audiences Content Fund has more than proved its worth. To date, the Fund has helped develop 144 new ideas and 55 brand new programs. These have considerably enhanced the public service offering of CITV, Channel 5’s Milkshake!, Channel 4, S4C and others. By offering up to 50 percent of the finding for public-service content proposals for children and young people, it has enabled Ofcom’s new powers obliging ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 to carry more children’s programs to be significantly more effective. Now we face a definite decrease in the number and range of programs being made for young people in the U.K.—we could very quickly be back where we started three years ago—with the BBC as the only body commissioning content for children—and in fact, it’s worse, as the BBC is facing government-imposed budget cuts of its own over the next few years too.”

CMF Director Greg Childs OBE said: “It’s tragic. Ofcom has for years reported ‘market failure’ in the kids’ sector. The collapse of advertising revenue has meant that the commercial public service broadcasters have been commissioning very little to complement and compete with the BBC. The Fund turned that around—for a relatively small amount of money. It had a profound impact not just on the number of people working on content for kids—but on the kids themselves as the range of programs on offer was expanded.”

Childs added: “The amount the government needlessly clawed back was around 25 percent of the overall budget for the Fund. This could easily keep the Fund alive for a further couple of years as the effects of BBC budget cuts are better understood, and as discussions on the future of the television license fee are concluded.”

Home concluded: “There needs to be public service media for children beyond the BBC, and the pilot proves this is possible. Children need media that is domestic as well as international. Media that reflects their own lives and culture, and where they hear their own voices. A generation of young people denied their own stories will grow up to be a generation with little loyalty for the institutions and values of the society in which they live.”





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About Kristin Brzoznowski

Kristin Brzoznowski is the executive editor of World Screen. She can be reached at kbrzoznowski@worldscreen.com.
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