Kids Pubcasters Talk Challenges at MIPJunior

BBC’s Alice Webb, Rai’s Luca Milano and France Télévisions’ Tiphaine de Raguenel discussed the crucial role public broadcasters play in the kids’ media business at MIPJunior.

“Now, more than ever, public-service broadcasting is incredibly important,” said Webb, the director of BBC Children’s. “It’s not just about the creation of the highest-quality content. It’s not just about making sure that we underpin creators and producers in our countries. It’s not just because we are here to keep our cultural identity alive. We are here to provide a counterweight to commercial pressures. We are here to provide some kind of balance to the echo chambers that we increasingly see in the digital world. We are here to keep the breadth.”

Webb noted that 70 percent of the BBC’s kids’ shows are 100-percent financed by the license fee. “And these are shows that wouldn’t [otherwise] get made. That gives us real freedom because we can invest in shows that are still finding their voice. We can invest in things that maybe aren’t going to be sustainable, at least in the short term, in the commercial world. That is so important because otherwise, kids are going to grow up with a [media] diet that is much less diverse, much less colorful, much less exciting.”

Webb went on to state that as budgets are constrained and the landscape ever more competitive, “we are focusing on doing fewer things because we have to do them bigger so we can make more of an impact with them. We have been and continue to make tough choices in what we back.”

Discussing changing consumption habits, Webb noted, “we have to do the new—we have to be online and we have the iPlayer—but we also have to maintain the legacy. We have to do both. We will absolutely be where children are.”

Milano, the director of Rai Ragazzi at Italian pubcaster Rai, oversees two channels, Rai YoYo and Rai Gulp. “All of the content we buy is meant both for free TV and free VOD,” Milano said. “We don’t have a streaming service for kids yet, but we are going to develop it in the next year.”

Milano, who is also the chair of the Kids Media Experts Group at the EBU, stressed the importance of European public broadcasters in the children’s media business. He said they invest some 20 billion euros a year in audiovisual content. A key challenge, he said, is that public broadcasting revenue streams are flat while commercial outlets are seeing their revenues rise. He emphasized the things that public broadcasting does well, such as the drama series Jams, which teaches kids about how to recognize inappropriate behavior from adults, and The Star of Andra and Tati (La Stella di Andra e Tati), which is based on the true story of two sisters who survived Auschwitz.

De Raguenel is executive director of France 4—which is being converted into an online-only service in 2020 at the direction of the French government—and director of children and youth activities at France Télévisions. “We address kids as future citizens rather than future consumers,” she said. France Télévisions’ kids content budget is 30 million euros, de Raguenel noted, much of that invested in animation.