In the lead-up to the Budget, the Federal Government has announced a new ABC television channel dedicated to commercial-free children's programming.
ABC3 will include ABC Kids programs already being screened, and also new material. It aims to broadcast 50 per cent Australian content — good news for local TV production houses.
The UK, USA, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Sweden have dedicated, publicly funded children's TV channels. We will hear more in the budget, but if estimates of $20 million for the new channel are accurate, ours will cost us about $5 per child per year. Usual 'tough economic times' concerns notwithstanding, that's not a lot!
But why do we need it? Aren't kids all glued to YouTube and Facebook? Is anyone under the age of 15 still watching TV?
Quality television for children is widely regarded as a good idea. Educational programs help kids learn. Studies suggest Sesame Street viewers perform better academically, even years after they have stopped watching.
And children learn much more than just spelling and maths from watching and discussing TV. Dramas and cartoons help them learn about the world and their place in it.
But not all children's TV is designed with their best interests at heart. Research from the International Central Institute for Youth and Educational Television suggests girls are under-represented. Most cartoons are designed for boys on the (shaky) assumption that girls watch boys' TV, but boys don't watch girls' TV.
When they appear, female characters, especially in cartoons, are often grossly thin or highly sexualised. While children are, to some extent, able to interpret critically the shows they watch, some female characters are commonly believed to inspire youth fashion and inform notions of beauty.
In addition, many children's TV shows make their money out of toys, DVDs, accessories and games. If there's a Dora the Explorer trinket my four-year-old niece doesn't want, I have yet to find it. Although commercialisation isn't bad in itself, it limits certain types of children's TV, especially quality drama and factual programming.
Australia's commercial networks screen children's TV because they are made to, not because they want to. Federal Children's Television Standards require commercial stations to show 130 hours a year (about 30 minutes per weekday) of programming for pre-schoolers ('P' programs) and 260 hours of programming for primary school-aged children ('C' programs). This is under review but not expected to change significantly.
The Australian Children's Television Foundation has long argued that C programming fails to reach