Interview: Greg Childs OBE

Greg Childs, OBE

The Children’s Media Conference (CMC) Editorial Director Greg Childs has been awarded an OBE for Services to International Trade and the Children’s Media Sector in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List.

The award has been presented to Greg in recognition of his considerable contribution to children’s media throughout his career, which started at the BBC where he worked for 27 years primarily as a director, producer and executive producer of children’s programmes.

Total Licensing chatted to Greg to find out more.

Congratulations on your recent honour! What does this mean for you, personally and professionally?

Personally, it’s a fantastic cheer-up for the start of what looks like another difficult year for everyone. I have to admit that my inboxes on all platforms are packed with congratulations messages – some from people I haven’t seen for years – that is really cheering!

Professionally, apart from people now having to stand up whenever I enter a room – I think the main difference is not for me, but for the kids’ media industry. I’m not the first in the kids’ sector to be honoured. In the UK people like the amazing Anna Home and Brian Cosgrove of Cosgrove Hall have the same award (which is humbling to say the least). Anne Wood has a CBE and animation campaigner Oli Hyatt an MBE. However, it’s been a while since the industry has been recognised in this way and that is important.

The award is partly for “services to international trade” – that reflects the phenomenal powerhouse that is the UK children’s creative sector pursuing international sales and coproduction. The award citation also mentions “services to the children’s media sector,” which I think is really about what all those creators, makers and distributors of children’s TV and other media have done for the kids’ audience in the UK itself – by providing great content.

Can you give us some highlights of your career to date?

Being a floor assistant on the 1979 General Election programme at The BBC – amazing to work for an organisation that was part of the making of history. (And yes, it was me who gave David Dimbleby the Mars bar he was caught eating live on national television).

When the light went on in my head as a trainee Assistant Producer on “Play School” and I realised how fantastic the children’s audience were compared to mere adults.

Almost weekly on “Record Breakers” – appreciating the opportunity and responsibility of being given a great budget (compared to anything we’d see today) to take on a much-loved brand, breathe new life into it, and steer it through ten years “in sickness and in health,” doing some of the weirdest things you’d see on TV but sticking to public service values throughout.

Launching the first ever game on a BBC website – it was like a moon landing back then.

(according to the Guardian) when we ran the first ever live TV show in which kids could participate online. We thought maybe a few hundred would get involved. We were wrong!

Seeing CBeebies and CBBC channels on air on their first day – that was a job well done.

Working on interactivity for Winnie the Pooh for Disney – a surreal mashup of my favourite children’s book and my new passion to let kids join in.

Watching the first ever session at CMC on “The Coming of Broadband” and realising we were at the start of something important and valuable and that people in the kids’ sector would share!

Seeing the Young Audiences Content Fund launched – nine years after the Children’ Media Foundation first suggested something very like it.

You must have seen a lot of change in the children’s media industry – how do you think this is a reflection of the changing way children consume and enjoy media?

A while back, as I’ve mentioned above, ‘interactivity’ was the buzzword. It soon became clear that was only part of the equation.

Children love to play and to play with their favourite brands, characters and stories. However, stories remain at the heart of it and the way the industry has changed over the last ten years or so, to offer media content on many different platforms in appropriate forms that allow children to sit back and enjoy, or on other platforms sit forward and engage – and when it works really well to influence, co-create, and make media of their own.

I think we have come through a transitional period when sometimes the tech didn’t meet up to the most innovative audience engagement ambitions, and now we have reached a place where brands understand the need to be ubiquitous – and I include licensed merchandise in this equation – and at best to deliver the right type of content with the appropriate form of technology.

It’s also important never to underestimate how kids will take that technology, if they can get their hands on it, and do something surprising with it. That’s why it’s important to effectively research what they are up to, how things are changing – and they change rapidly now.

Where an organisation like the Children’s Media Conference sits in this equation is we help the industry to keep ahead of the game (though I suspect we’ll never be ahead of the most adventurous kids). We encourage people to share what they know and to pursue and demonstrate innovation – and of course for the last 19 years, we’ve brought as much research as possible to the Conference audience. Listening to kids is far more prevalent now than it was years ago.

That’s one of the frustrations for the Children’s Media Foundation – that politicians and some of our regulators are not listening anything like enough to young people so that they better understand the way media is influencing, and the way they’re using it, coping with it – or sometimes not.

What are the plans for the Children’s Media Conference this year?

All being well, CMC will return inperson in July and we’ll be in Sheffield once again with a strong programme of sessions and great in-person networking. At the same time, we’ll deliver the core Conference content as a live stream for delegates who are unable to be in Sheffield.

That means Keynotes, Commissioner sessions, our Question Time to dig into policy issues, the pitch competition “Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is” and special sessions for the animation and writing communities. It will include content for all our usual sectors – film, audio, publishing, licensing, interactive and educational media, and even theatre and live events. Additionally, the muchappreciated video content we started to make during lockdown will continue to enhance the entire conference offering – videos on a huge range of topics that delegates can watch in their own time.

For those who missed CMC 2021 and our events since, I can recommend subscribing to our YouTube channel. Because all our content from the past few years is there. It’s an invaluable resource and all the product of the industry sharing what it knows for the greater good. https://www.youtube.com/c/ TheChildren’sMediaConference.

On the whole I think the OBE is a way of saying it’s been worth it and for anyone who’s in children’s media – in any capacity – it’s certainly worth taking a look at the uniquely informative content, discussion and debate that the industry has presented at CMC.