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Children in the age of interactivity and digital TV – the challenges and opportunities

 

Good evening. 

 

May I begin by thanking the Compromiso Nacional de Television para la Infancia en Colombia and the TV de Calidad team for this very kind invitation to consider the potential future of children’s media in Colombia.  My particular thanks go to Patricia Castano and Adelaida Trujillo not only for making this happen – but for their friendship and stimulating contributions at the Prix Jeunesse in Munich, where we have met on many occasions to view the very best of the world’s television for children and to discuss and debate its purposes and merit.

 

It’s a great honour to be asked to open TV De Calidad 2008 at a time when Digital Television is coming to Colombia.  This is the perfect opportunity to review your media approach to children and young people in the light of the changes that will follow both the digitisation of television and the increasing use of the internet amongst the young.

 

At the Prix Jeunesse in May, I was privileged to be able to hear, at first hand, some of the initiatives in stimulating children’s media which are already in place in Colombia and across Latin America.

 

When I prepared this presentation challenges and opportunities in digital and interactive media, I was struck by the way in which many of the projects already undertaken here in Colombia are already reflecting some of those issues.

 

For example:

·       Un Minuto por Mis Derechos, with its emphasis on empowering young people to make their own media content, 

·       El show de los Niños … y un oso, with its aspiration to present a multimedia approach to young children’s education,

 

·       The Contestable Fund for production of quality local children’s television – which goes to the heart of the dilemma facing  broadcasters and producers right across the world, including the UK where we are discussing just such an initiative,

 

·       And of course Televisión de Calidad itself and its use of an online community to foster awareness and campaign for quality in children’s media,

 

I’ve mentioned these projects because when I talk about digital media I don’t want to suggest that it is somehow far from your experience or out of reach in Colombia. I believe that despite low levels of income and uptake there are ways in which digital television in particular can over time be put to powerful use as a social force.  But of course many of my examples inevitably come from the UK, where children’s use of interactive media – games, the internet and interactive television is more widespread and more sophisticated.  But then I hope that’s why you’ve asked me – to give some sort of vision of a possible future, touched by as much realism as we can bring to bear perhaps in the discussion which will follow.

So, what exactly is a digital interactive experience for kids, how does it present itself and why is it important?

 

One thing to say right at the outset is that children and young people when they have the means are enthusiastic about new technology and what it has to offer.  In a sense this is the generation for whom the internet