Dear Director General of the BBC,
When you are not too busy fending off criticism from Savilegate, you may want to help us parents preserve the innocence of our children a little longer past 6 years old. Please could you replace CBBC with two channels – one for ages 5 – 10 and one for ages 11 plus (so that the channels are a bit more in keeping with what is deemed age appropriate for primary school children and secondary school children). I have a 6 year old daughter (nearly 7 as she constantly reminds me) who is too young for Cbeebies. She says, I quote, “Cbeebies is for babies” and this is a sentiment occupied by most of her contemporaries. She is, at times, too young for some programmes on CBBC. When I to and fro from the kitchen to the living room of an evening preparing dinner, I see CBBC programmes vary from Shaun the Sheep, Arthur and Scooby Doo (all fine) to Tracy Beaker, The Sarah Jane Adventures and Young Dracula, which, in my opinion, feature topic areas and life issues that should have a 12 certificate.
A friend of mine does not allow her daughter to watch CBBC and I feel I maybe should have followed suit but there are quite a few programmes on CBeebies that bore the pants off my daughter, but entertain my 11 month old son (In the Night Garden is a good example) so I feel it is difficult to find a happy medium.
I don’t remember experiencing this problem when I was a kid as there was no such thing as a children’s channel, just an age appropriate time-slot. The older kids got to watch the later programmes and the younger kids (at bed by 6 and 7pm) had their earlier slot watching the likes of He-Man and She-Ra. Saturday mornings were the best for kids TV and from memory I don’t remember programmes similar to Tracy Beaker or Young Dracula – it was more like Count Duckula, the Littlest Hobo and Rude Dog and the Dweebs.
I dont mean to be a frumpy old bag harking back to ‘the good old times’ of children’s TV but kids are growing up too quick now and I think a lot of that has got to do with poor TV scheduling. I dont have Sky, I just have freeview so my daughter relies on the BBC and CITV for her viewing and I just think these channels have lost their way a bit and need to do some market research with kids and parents to sort out their scheduling and the types of programmes they air.
Rant over!
(as for TV past watershed, If, like me, you dont like talent contests, period dramas and reality shows, then you are fucked…..in fact I dont even know why I am paying my licence).
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Thanks for reading.
tommarter 