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As a Mum, and a TV professional, I feel physically sick at what’s happening to our children’s television. As a so-called celebrity who was cajoled into several “reality” shows when the concept first hit our screens a decade ago, I’ve sworn never to take part again and the very last thing I’d do is let my kids anywhere near them. I know how damaging, upsetting and traumatic they are – and how long-lasting the feeling of abuse. To subject a nine-year old child to such public humiliation and warped thinking is tantamount to child cruelty. It also speaks volumes about how the influence of television has affected social values. The fact that loving parents are queuing up to sacrifice their children on the altar of lowest-common-denominator TV is as obscene as it is naive. It’s not just my opinion. The word “abuse” has been used by the brightest and most experienced brains in the world of child welfare, including Penelope Leach and Baroness Morgan, the children’s minister. Yet we live in a world where the TV producers – mostly young men and women who haven’t yet approached the maturity of parenthood - think they know best. They boast of “groundbreaking” television, they reckon they’re challenging old fashioned preconceptions, they think they’re exciting and fresh. We have to move on, they protest, from the days of puppet shows and squeaky clean presenters creating models with glue and sticky-back-plastic. Modern kids want pacier shows with opinions, issues and debate. That’s what they say: what they are doing, however, is manufacturing cheap programming and controversial headlines in the frantic scramble for ratings. One psychologist remarked that the children who took part in “Boys and Girls Alone”, where Channel Four took 20 children aged between 8 and 12 and left them to fend for themselves in two Cornish cottages in a “Lord Of The Flies” type experiment, showed that producers were treating the children with contempt. When I was trained in television journalism nearly thirty years ago, which included being taught how to write for “Newsround”, I was told it was paramount to respect the youth of the audience, to understand that I was broadcasting to children who might be sitting in front of the tv without their parents. It was important to use words that could honestly reflect the truth, but guard against frightening or traumatising. The TV is sometimes in loco parentis, I was told. That gives the TV producer an awesome responsibility. It was understood within BBC News at the time, that writing for Newsround, an audience of children, demanded a discipline and a skill that would be a useful lesson for all writers. There was an unquestioned and implicit respect for the young viewer. Sadly, even within children’s BBC now, or CBBC as it likes to be called, that respect seems to be disappearing. “Who Wants To Be A Superhero?” which airs on BBC2 on Saturday mornings, may sound innocuous, but it’s a poisonous so-called reality TV show that pits youngsters of nine against each other. It has all the pent-up emotion, tears, squabbles, tension and stress of a grown-up reality show. There are “tasks” which so far have included blindfold tasting and encounters with snakes, and the show is even anchored by two young, spiky-coiffured Ant and Dec look and sound-alikes. If this were in the evening “family” scheduling, with adult or youth contestants, I would happily dismiss this programme as puerile and hopelessly unoriginal. But it’s about little children and for little children – and as such, it’s obnoxious, distressing and harmful – to the kids involved, the audience and ultimately the standard of all television. The children, who I suspect have been quite cynically cast for the show (there’s the tall black bespectacled nerdy one, the little fat girl, the shy skinny redhead etc), have all invented superhero characters, which they then have to “become” as they live together in a “lair” and undertake various activities and challenges. At the end of the show, they are each placed on a plinth, and their performance and character is ruthlessly assassinated. Three are pulled forward and grilled further. That’s when the tears start and the lower lip starts to wobble on even the most confident. One is finally placed on a special pedestal and “powered down” – their superhero status stripped from them in agonising humiliation. The presenters and producers seem to think they can perform this dreadful ritual as long as they add vacuously insincere comments like “you were a great contestant – thanks for being such a good sport” as the dejected child limps off set. The BBC says all the kids have had a happy time, and vehemently deny that the experience could be anything other than fun. If this is fun, for the children themselves or us as an audience, then I worry what’s happening to our values and our understanding of what is entertainment. We’re all falling for a lie. Because this so-called reality television isn’t reality at all. The controversial Channel Four “Boys and Girls Alone” started with a lie and just got worse, as child psychologists and even local Cornish councillors campaigned to have the programme pulled off air. 40 leading child care experts wrote a letter to The Times complaining about scenes of children fighting and crying, suggesting that such an experiment would never have won ethical approval in any field other than television. “Imagine a world without grown ups, a world governed by children, where every decision is made by a ten year old” spouted the introductory voice-over. I’ve been in Celebrity Big Brother and Celebrity Fit Club and I can tell you – no decisions are really and truly made by the contestants – the situations are engineered and designed to promote conflict, heightened emotion and upset. This was no experiment to see how kids could build their own social structures, and think independently. This was prurient voyeurism and the parents who condoned it should be ashamed of themselves. Perhaps their attitude spells out the worrying standards of our national parenting skills. Because the parents involved sought to justify their actions by hoping the programme itself would teach their kids what they themselves hadn’t. One mum of a nine-year old said she was fed up with his attitude at home, because he did nothing to help. “I hope he learns a bit of respect for us,” she told the cameras. He does nothing. Maybe he’ll learn from his experience in there what we do for him.” After the filming, another Mum said her son had come home a transformed child. “He now realises how much work we do for him and what it entails to run a house. He's eager to help with cooking, puts his dirty clothes in the laundry and even put his brother to bed the other night without me having to ask,” she said, as if proud a TV programme had been a better Mum than she. Twenty years ago, when I was a new Mum who occasionally plonked my toddler down in front of an hour-long video of “Postman Pat” or “Thomas The Tank Engine” (or, God forbid, - “Teletubbies”! ) I worried about how the TV could instantly captivate my baby’s imagination, and keep him transfixed. We were all warned, weren’t we, about the dangers of using the TV as a babysitter? I know, however, that the likes of children’s TV programmes such as those, and indeed Blue Peter and much of CBeebies, are made by creators who care for their audience as they would their own children. At TVam, I worked alongside Anne Wood, the legendary creator of Teletubbies and Roland Rat. Inherent in all her work was a love of, and deep respect for the child who would be watching her programmes. But a new generation of kids TV makers have infiltrated what should be a cosy, safe realm. Their cynical, harsh outlook must not be allowed to take hold. I don’t believe in bringing kids up in a cotton-wool environment. Even at the age of just nine, kids should be allowed to compete, and learn what it’s like both to win and lose – and to fall while trying. But these life lessons should be learned only within a safe and friendly framework, where Mum or Dad is on hand to rub a bloody knee or comfort a bruised ego – and where any small humiliation is suffered fleetingly and only in front of family and friends. Even in the Middle Ages, we didn’t put kids in the stocks. But that’s just what we are doing nowadays – on prime-time Saturday morning kids television we are holding little kids up to be laughed at and ridiculed. As my 13 year old son snorted: “How are those kids ever going to go back to school after that?” Only the psychologists can say what long term damage this may do to the individual children concerned. I don’t want to be part of a society that thinks this is ok. Ten years ago, I chaired a debate at the Edinburgh Television Festival about the falling standards of kids TV. I was stunned by how many producers simply didn’t care – and protested that kids TV was better than it had ever been. I found their attitude depressing. Many of them are probably parents by now. I wonder if their attitudes have changed?
