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read half grandpa is emperorIn a recent excellent documentary about the last emperor of Ethiopia, Haile Selassie, I was blown away by a small but totally unexpected plot twist.Shortly before he was killed in the coup, one of the film’s main protagonists, Ethiopian agriculture minister Kasa Wald Mariam, appeared on a British children’s television show blue peter.
If you’re not British or over 30, you might be quite confused by this reference to a children’s TV show.But if, like me, you are all, then the phrase blue peter All are inextricably linked with childhood memories. Hearing them mentioned again in this unusual setting reminded me of that.
Created by the BBC in 1958, blue peter Play it twice a week to kids coming home from school. It’s a healthy mix of live coverage, model-making involving sticky-backed plastic, and adorable pets (who could forget Shep?). For those who appear on the show, there is no higher honor than receiving a small enamel “Blue Peter Badge”.
But it’s also a show that deals with current events. When I started watching the show in the UK in the 1970s, it was taken for granted that children’s media should cover news and world events, which is where the Ethiopian minister with John Knox, Leslie Judd and Peter Purdue Weiss discusses the famine in the country.
The idea of a politician from any country appearing on children’s television seems rather far-fetched these days. Part of the reason is that the entertainment ecosystem is fragmented into thousands of highly targeted segments, giving 21st-century kids something our generation couldn’t imagine: choice.
In the 1970s, millions watched blue peter At preset times, the three available TV channels had little else to show (Channel 4 finally appeared in 1982). Today, if you count all cable channels, there are over 400 different broadcast channels in the UK and an estimated 1,700 in the US. In this overcrowded environment, TV producers know they risk losing viewers — young or old — if they don’t grab them right away.
As a result, it also becomes more difficult to create a collective conversation or memory across society.to watch blue peter Considered a rite of passage by British adults of my generation, with shows like the teen music flagship top of pop.
This is not a uniquely British phenomenon. In the United States in the 1990s, MTV was watched in 68 million households out of an estimated population of 250 million. MTV built a more subversive image than Blue Peter but also addressed current issues, spearheading the “Rock the Vote” movement in the early ’90s to teach democracy to a broad audience.
Not anymore: The MTV News channel recently announced it was closing after 36 years.at the same time blue peteralong with press conferenceAnother old favorite, BBC One, is no longer on the main BBC One channel and is tuned in by a fraction of its peak of eight million in the 1970s.These days, parents rarely find their kids huddled in front of the same TV at the same time every night because they have their own screen and their own “For You” page on social media to watch 24 hours a day
This transformation greatly empowers people.memories of my generation blue peter But are we really going back to those restrictive early days? Once you get a taste of the options, it’s addictive. The explosive spread of the Internet has brought countless benefits, such as millions of people around the world having access to previously unimaginable information with just a mobile phone.
The dark side of all these customizations is equally evident: the erosion of shared foundations of knowledge, experience and dialogue within and between generations. And, while public sector broadcasters such as the BBC or NPR try to maintain a broader approach, it is difficult to compete with hyper-personalized content on social media platforms such as TikTok. Instead of uniting the nation, American television channels such as Fox News and MSNBC seem to exist in entirely parallel cognitive universes.
Some entrepreneurs dream of changing that: businesses such as 1440 or Allsides are working to combat media bias among adults, while Will Lewis, a former Financial Times reporter, launched The News Movement as Youth social media platform. I wish them all the best. But in a fragmented media environment, the chances of 8 million UK kids sitting down to watch the same TV show are slim to none.
Follow Gillian on Twitter @gilliant and email her at gillian.tett@ft.com
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