Ultimately Newsround is going where CBBC's audience is going, on iPlayer, while showing an 8 minute bulletin on the linear channel in the morning to cover their remit.
I understand why it feels sad that it's losing the afternoon bulletin but their target audience has different viewing habits to those of us who watched it as kids.
It's easy to forget that kids today are more digitally savvy. Going online either through iPlayer and YouTube is actually a good strategy.
I agree. I work in education and I'm really starting to come round to the view that a great deal of students actually prefer the move to online learning that coronavirus has brought about. A lot of us are still clinging to the ways of working that we've been doing for decades but young people today are radically different. A few years ago I realised that the new students were now the Google generation; now I'm realising we're firmly into the social media generation.
New university applicants this year were born in around 2002 so would have been 2 years old when Facebook launched and only 4 when Twitter launched.
Kids nowadays are 100% digital natives and consume everything in a different fashion to how generations past did. I once considered my generation to be tech-savvy but I'm from the era of a computer being on a trolley in the corner of the classroom and being touched as a treat once a term. I've realised that with hindsight, my generation was still 95% analogue!
That makes me feel old and I'm only in my early 30s!
Ultimately Newsround is going where CBBC's audience is going, on iPlayer, while showing an 8 minute bulletin on the linear channel in the morning to cover their remit.
I understand why it feels sad that it's losing the afternoon bulletin but their target audience has different viewing habits to those of us who watched it as kids.
It's easy to forget that kids today are more digitally savvy. Going online either through iPlayer and YouTube is actually a good strategy.
This, it makes sense. My only concern is that I hope the BBC remains committed to Newsround and not use this an excuse to generally let the show decline and be axed. If this move is successful then certainly it’ll be successful for Newsround, and then what’s to stop the BBC taking an iPlayer first strategy for CBBC?
COVID has got people doing the kind of things that people like me have been advocating for years!
COVID has certainly sped up how people are now using the internet for a whole range of things. Employees are now realising how easier it is to work from home, so won't need to commute to work to be in a physical office five days a week and home delivery shopping services have shot up since March.
Children and young people are always ahead when it comes to changing consumer habits, so it won't be much of a surprise that this first all digital generation will be the first to be fully reliant on the internet when it comes to work and pleasure, which include tv.
If this move is successful then certainly it’ll be successful for Newsround, and then what’s to stop the BBC taking an iPlayer first strategy for CBBC?
What's wrong with that, if it makes sense to do so?
COVID has got people doing the kind of things that people like me have been advocating for years!
COVID has certainly sped up how people are now using the internet for a whole range of things. Employees are now realising how easier it is to work from home, so won't need to commute to work to be in a physical office five days a week and home delivery shopping services have shot up since March.
Children and young people are always ahead when it comes to changing consumer habits, so it won't be much of a surprise that this first all digital generation will be the first to be fully reliant on the internet when it comes to work and pleasure, which include tv.
What is being forgotten in the transfer to digital is the desire to be able to simply click on a single page and receive a digest of the most up to date news in one place. The biggest loss from ditching the afternoon bulletin is not the loss of news was the linear TV service but the loss of such a digest being available on the website at the time of day that children are most likely to be using the Internet. At a time when the global service of BBC news has (in partnership with Quibi) launched a shorter format of bulletin that is only available on demand but is mostly presented in the way of a traditional bulletin aimed at adults it seems a shame to be removing a similar service aimed at children.
Ultimately Newsround is going where CBBC's audience is going, on iPlayer, while showing an 8 minute bulletin on the linear channel in the morning to cover their remit.
I understand why it feels sad that it's losing the afternoon bulletin but their target audience has different viewing habits to those of us who watched it as kids.
No doubt about that but just feel they're more likely to access it after school than at breakfast time, so a later bulletin makes more sense.
I would assume they've done some research though, and have cold, hard numbers.
And that's just it, if I was a child now and wanted to watch something after returning from school. Would I watch a news bulletin or a cartoon or entertainment show on the CBBC section of iPlayer?
Most of us watched Newsround in the afternoon on BBC One because it was there and it helped that there was Grange Hill, Byker Grove or another great drama series on afterwards, so you wouldn't go across to CITV who by then would have finished and the ITV regions would be showing something else for adults.
Admittedly Newsround awoke my interest in journalism, but there wasn't the internet in homes when I was in the target audience in the 80s and early 90s.
The digital first strategy ensures the BBC continues to provide PSB children's journalism, but as we should all know by now that we live in a multi-platform environment where CBBC's audience are the most likely to embrace watching their output on portable devices.
I would assume they've done some research though, and have cold, hard numbers.
And that's just it, if I was a child now and wanted to watch something after returning from school. Would I watch a news bulletin or a cartoon or entertainment show on the CBBC section of iPlayer?
Most of us watched Newsround in the afternoon on BBC One because it was there and it helped that there was Grange Hill, Byker Grove or another great drama series on afterwards, so you wouldn't go across to CITV who by then would have finished and the ITV regions would be showing something else for adults.
Admittedly Newsround awoke my interest in journalism, but there wasn't the internet in homes when I was in the target audience in the 80s and early 90s.
The digital first strategy ensures the BBC continues to provide PSB children's journalism, but as we should all know by now that we live in a multi-platform environment where CBBC's audience are the most likely to embrace watching their output on portable devices.
Exactly, they may as well kill off Newsround now if that's what they want. As a parent of young children I'd not want to leave them unsupervised with web access. No doubt they can refer to analytics about Newsround's 'hits' but that can sometimes give the wrong interpretation.
Newsround is far better off producing content as it’s needed, rather than traditional bulletins IMO. Some of the guides and short videos they’ve done for helping young people understand terror attacks, the pandemic, etc. have been extremely popular, and that seems like the kind of thing they should be doing. Kids are much less likely to come home and sit through Newsround before watching whatever is on CBBC next, and that’s something the BBC have to respond to. Investing more resources into content on iPlayer, IGTV, Snapchat and YouTube seems like a logical step.
Newsround is far better off producing content as it’s needed, rather than traditional bulletins IMO. Some of the guides and short videos they’ve done for helping young people understand terror attacks, the pandemic, etc. have been extremely popular, and that seems like the kind of thing they should be doing. Kids are much less likely to come home and sit through Newsround before watching whatever is on CBBC next, and that’s something the BBC have to respond to. Investing more resources into content on iPlayer, IGTV, Snapchat and YouTube seems like a logical step.
They certainly have more PSB status than padding the NR bulletins in the 00s with Harry Potter plugs.
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