Meet Me At The Corner – site review

I visited meetmeatthecorner.org when the site was recommended to me by its founder Donna Guthire. meetmeatthecorner.org is a website for preschoolers and school going kids to explore their neighborhood, their surroundings and at the same time learn the art of storytelling.  It’s an interactive website in the sense that it allows kids to upload their own videos as well.

MEET ME AT THE CORNER, Virtual Field Trips for Kids was founded by Donna Guthire, author of The Witch Who Lives Down the Hall (Harcourt Brace, 1985) which was a Literary Guild and Book of the Month Club selection. Donna has written more than twenty award winning books for children and this website is her effort to foster individual expression in kids.

The website covers a wide range of topics- from cooking to recycling, from arts to astronomy, from poetry to fun-filled activities and almost any topic under the sun related to children. What I really liked about it was the active participation by kids. It’s the kids who conduct the interview or participate in the activities show in the videos. So in a way, it’s their creativity that has been channelized by these videos.

The site has some unique videos such as the one featuring Natalia Paruz playing musical saw at the New York Library for the Performing Arts and the ones featured in the Illustrator week.

Each video is followed by a video description and links to books related to the topic. Interested parents & kids can click on the links and it takes them to the Amazon store where they can purchase the books.  The video page also has a link to the learning corner, a part of the website where parents can takes cues about either quizzing kids about what they or make them do activities related to the videos. This I thought was a good way to further the kids’ interaction with what they saw.

I would have loved to see more information on where to obtain materials for the make and do videos such as the one on composting. Parents and kids who would be interested in doing things after watching a video would love to know how to obtain materials for those things. Also a related videos tab which can link videos based on similar topic will be helpful. Apart from that the site is easy to understand and navigate.

Over all, I think the site is a great resource for kids to learn and enjoy an enriching online video experience. Check it out at : http://www.meetmeatthecorner.org/

Children’s TV Training

In our research on Chilren’s Television Programming (CTP), we tried to find out how those interested in CTP can train themselves. Here is list of resources were you can get some training.

Job training centers, seminars

Domestic:

Sesame Workshop- non-profit organization behind the production of several educational children’s programs that have run on public broadcasting around the world.

International:

Wokshop Interactive (Amsterdam): Cinekid, the International Film, Television and New Media Festival for Children and Mediamatic organise a workshop for professionals on interactive television for children during the Cinekidfestival.

Lola Kenya Screen 2009 Workshop (South Africa)

New Australian Writer’s Guild Workshop on Children’s TV Drama

ii)    Universities with deep academic programs dealing with domain

American Studies @ Princeton University:

Children’s Television: History, Politics, Economics

The class examines the history, aesthetics, economics, and ideology of children’s television, from the late 1940s to the present. We will examine in particular how reformers, censors, parents, and producers use television to reinforce or challenge the cultural ideal of childhood innocence. Although we will discuss studies of children’s attitudes towards television, we will not focus on how children may be positively or negatively affected by TV. Rather, the bulk of the class focuses on how adults make decisions about children’s television. Programs studied will include Sesame Street, Howdy Doody, Pok émon , and SpongeBob SquarePants.

NYU Tisch Undergraduate Film & Television

Children’s Television Production Workshop

Writing for Children’s TV

School of Communications and Theater @ Temple University

online course: Media and Children

NYU School of Continuing & Professional Studies

Writing for Children’s, Teen’s and Tween’s TV (Spring 2009)

Television for young people has come a long way since Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo. It is a world unto itself, with its own cable networks, superstars, and product tie-ins. Like publishing for children and young adults, kids’ TV has unique parameters, jargon, and “dos and don’ts.” This course helps you develop the knowledge and skills necessary to conceive of, structure, and complete a spec script for a children’s, tween’s or teen’s TV series.

ii) Special Articles and Studies

Education Resources Information Center

Special paper: The Role of the Early Childhood Advisor in Children’s Television Production

Children’s TV Programming – Trends

Television for years has been the primary resource for kids when it comes to entertainment and educational and informational content. But as newer mediums such as ipods, mobile have gained popularity; tv is no longer the sole source for kids content. As is the case for other age groups, these new mediums have established themselves in the kids market. To put it simply, it is no longer just TV and DVDs/VCDs. 

The Parents Television Council published the “Family Guide to TV” which published ratings for the top 20 most popular prime-time shows watched by children Ages 2-17. This guide was published in October 2007. Although published almost two years back, the guide reflects how kids today are not necessarily watching age appropriate shows. Apart from watching shows such as ‘Deal or No Deal’, ‘Extereme Makeovers: Home Edition’, they are also watching ‘Family Guy’, ‘Survivors’.  You can view the entire report here.

Latest Trends and Movements

Online Presence: Over the years, websites have evolved to strength the relationship between kids and their favorite characters.

Websites offer games, video, art, radio and several other services for kids to interact with their favorite characters. This way, a kid can watch Sponge Bob on Nickelodeon and then go online to play his games or watch videos. The experience is also extended towards parents by services such as party planning, kids recipes, online shopping, parenting tips, events information etc. Therefore when parents are online with their kids, there is content for them to interact with as well.

New Technologies:

More and more broadcasters are exploring mediums such as ipods, in car entertainment, mobile tv, video on demand as options to offer children programming content.

AT&T announced CruiseCast in-car satellite TV Service launch in spring 2009. With a cost of $1,299 for the kit and $28 per month for the service, the service offer 22 channels and 20 sat radio stations. The kids channel lineup includes Disney Channel, Discovery Kids, Animal Planet, Nickelodeon and Cartoon Network Mobile among other channel.  ⁽¹⁾

In august 2008, Turner Broadcasting announced that it will make television content Cartoon Network available via ICO mim. ICO mim is an interactive mobile video, navigation and emergency assistance service.

Nickelodeon offers Nick Jr Podcasts as “Video To Go” for both kids and parents. Video podcasts of the kid’s favorite characters can be downloaded to ipod, iphones or directly to the computer.

PBS Kids released PBS Kids Play an online software for children 3-6 years on a subscription basis. The software offers games that help kids explore essential preschool and kindergarten skills.

Key Legal Issues:

The Broadcast Law Blog: A good place to stay abreast with the legal changes/development related to children television programming and advertising is Broadcast Law Blog.  check it out at http://www.broadcastlawblog.com/archives/cat-childrens-programming-and-advertising.html

The most important factors influencing CTP are the rules laid down by FCC. THE FCC has laid down rules and regulations for children televisiion programming.

According to a research, children in America on an average watch atleast three hours of television a day. All broadcast television stattions – commercial and non-commercial stattions have to offer educational and information children’s programming (1)

In 1990, Congress enacted the Children’s Television Act (CTA) to increase the amount of educational and informational programming for children available on television. CTA requires each broadcast television station in the United States to serve the educational and informational needs of children through its overall programming, including programming specifically designed to serve these needs (“core programming”). It also limits the amount of time broadcasters and cable operators may devote to advertisements during children’s programs.

Under the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rules, television stations must:

·         provide parents and consumers with advance information about core programs being aired;

·         define the type of programs that qualify as core programs; and

·         air at least three hours per week of core programs.

Penguins of Madagascar

I loved Madagascar (2005) and Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) and most of all I loved the scheming notorious penguins. How I wish they had more screen time… Well, that wish is about to come true.

Time Out New York reports that the Madagascar penguins are set to debut on Nickelodeon with their very own show: Penguins of Madagascar The “set” is modeled after the 1960s blueprint of the animal house (back then, the zoo really did house large mammals, like the elephants and lions depicted in the films), with hints of the 2009 institution. “It doesn’t have the modern amenities of the current zoo; it’s evocative of what it was before they put in really nice habitats,” says co-executive producer Mark McCorkle. In the pilot, the penguins travel all the way to a dump in New Jersey, and narrowly avoid being run over by a D train on their way back.

Right, I am not a kid to watch Nickelodeon; but who cares?

Penguins of Madagascar premiers on March 28 at 9:30 PM on Nickelodeon.

Children’s tv- the approach

For all of us, children’s tv is perhaps the first exposure we ever had to television. And this experience is unique compared to any other tv viewing experience we will every have. As we all know, kids programming is a rich source for kids to learn to perform daily activities, learn numbers, counting fun, reading, talking and many such activities.

As we tried to define the ‘ins’ and ‘outs’ for this study, we realized that this is a huge segment and can span over age group 3-12 years. One way to classify this study was based on the age group. The broad age group can be further divided into smaller age groups. Also, the content differs as the age increases.

Another way to classify way based on the approach- animation (Curious George), character based (Barney).

The initial difficulty was to decide on which classification to follow. We had to decide whether we wanted to go by the broad age group or do the narrow classification. After some deliberation, we decided we will use the broad age group, but in the process of documentation give references to the narrow age groups and different approach to programming.

Children’s Tv

Learning the ins and out of a tv segment is always an interesting exercise. As part of this exercise, I along with two other classmates are developing a dossier for Children’s TV in America. My other classmates are covering other segments such as film features, documentaries, marketing, advertising, mobile etc.

Our attempt is to gather as much indepth information as possible about childrens tv- market segmentation, latest trends, content ideation, marketing for kids tv, latest breakthrough, adaptation to mobile and internet to name a few.

I will keep this space updated with the additions made to my dossier.