8 to 14 year olds

Nobody is stopping you returning there.

There's a case study for this: London Weekend Television as run by David Frost in its early years. Tried to show high culture programming in prime time slots. It didn't work.

Or indeed history repeating 20 years later, with the original incarnation of TV-am.

A mostly highbrow and weighty intellectual running order, basically pumping out the kind of stuff Peter Jay and his mates in the city of London, and in Westminster would like to watch, if they got fed up with Radio Four's Today.

As the annals of broadcasting showed. No-one were watching, there was a far more viewer friendly, populist, and accessible early morning show on BBC One, and the station almost collapsed under the original instigators arrogance and pomposity.

I found Grange Hill to be controversial but that didn't stop it from becoming one of the longest lasting children's programmes.

Why would children who come home from school want to watch school?

I have encountered numerous kids and adults who think along similar lines so I'm not alone with my views. There's a difference between education and school so you cannot systematically assume that one who dislikes Grange Hill will equally dislike educational programmes and vice versa.

Some children learn better outside of a school setting and some children prefer videos rather than books as a learning medium.

Yes but children want to have fun as well, there's a balance. (I'm going to stop here, you've been proven why high brow and pompous programmes don't work in peak time viewing)

Because it wasn't their school, it wasn't their teachers, and they weren't being taught anything. It was escapism, tackling issues they would've otherwise been unaware of. It was a drama series. Were people put off watching The Office because they didn't want to watch an office when they weren't in work? No. Because that's a stupid theory.

And stop trying to prove your point by saying "people I've spoken to agree with me". What does that tell us? If you're so insistent on how right you are, go do some proper audience research, write up a report and deliver us a presentation on your findings.

The people they've spoken to are probably the voices in their head.

As already alluded to on here, there are already plenty of great shows on children's TV with educational value. A quick look through the CBBC schedule and I can see Horrible Histories, Absolute Genius, Art Ninja, Deadly 60, Nightmares of Nature and All Over the Place, which let kids learn about history, technology, art, nature and countries of the world in a fun and entertaining way, not unlike the way I enjoyed watching the likes of How 2, Johnny Ball and the Really Wild Show when growing up.

As much as we enjoyed the teacher wheeling the TV into the classroom, I don't think too many of us would have raced home to watch an episode of Zig Zag or Look and Read.

You are thinking on a completely different wavelength. I am referring to a dedicated TV channel with a tightly focused audience in mind yet like vs unlike comparisons are being made with popular entertainment for weekends and breakfast time TV channels intended for mass adult audiences.

Something to also take into account is that there are no programmes intended for 8 to 14 year olds shown during prime time on the main channels. Almost every programme shown during prime time is produced with entertainment for adults in mind. Children's programmes shown during prime time are on dedicated channels.

How many people on this forum are seriously interested in documentaries, educational programmes, and even highbrow arts, or is mass entertainment the interest of most users?



Only a small handful of people have contributed to the discussion so far which means that it's not possible to draw an accurate conclusion yet.

There are no programmes intended for 8 to 14 year olds on the main channels because they're on dedicated channels. You just said it yourself. If they were on the main channels during primetime, then adults wouldn't watch. 8 to 14 year olds would be, in theory, on their computers or smartphones. Alas, low viewing figures, no ad income, everybody loses their job. That's why it doesn't happen.

Like it's been said many times, this isn't how commercial television works. Nobody can afford to have a "dedicated TV channel with a tightly focused audience" because it doesn't make money. The majority of channels that broadcast today don't necessarily care about entertaining the audience, they just want to make money, which is why the aforementioned factual channels have broadened their programme library to include more general entertainment programmes. If LWT couldn't manage high-brow programming back when competition and ad revenue wasn't as much of a hinderance as it is today, what makes you think it'd work now?

And whether we are interested in "documentaries, educational programmes, and even highbrow arts" is irrelevant. There are niche programmes I like but I know it'd make no sense to have them on at primetime on a mainstream channel. More to the point, there are various other mediums which you can consume content through. So if you think you'll validate your point by trying to uncovering our personal tastes, it won't work.

If people had actually read what I had written then it is clear that the programmes would be shown on a DEDICATED TV channel rather than an existing TV channel, so why on earth anybody needed to bring LWT and TV-AM into the discussion I don't know because it's a complete irrelevance.



I stated that it would be have been run by the predecessors of the DFE. It would not be a conventional commercial channel funded by advertising, so factors like advertising revenue and viewing ratings are immaterial.



This is a valid point which could make such a TV channel unsuccessful nowadays although I mentioned earlier about it being marginalised by YouTube. You did read my statement about it being a lost opportunity from decades ago?

The sole intention of LWT was to produce high brow content! It's entirely relevant as VMPhil has pointed out - it wasn't viable, not enough people liked it to justify it, so they got rid of it. And that was a channel that broadcast programmes from other ITV network. With that in mind, how on earth would a whole channel dedicated to nothing but niche programming be more successful than a channel that only occasionally shows it?