May 10th, 2016
Cbeebies under threat
By Nat Whalley
Who doesn’t love CBeebies? Kids love it, and so do parents. BBC children’s programmes, like CBeebies, allow us those precious few minutes in a day to make a cuppa. And we can trust that our kids are watching quality shows.
But children’s TV as we know it is under threat. It’s being reported that the government plans to take money away from the BBC’s children’s programmes. [1] They want to give money-making channels a chance to compete for children’s shows.
The government is expected to announce the cut to the BBC children’s budget on Thursday. [2] So a big petition, standing up for advert-free BBC children’s television, will show that there’s huge public opposition to the government’s plans. Please can you sign the petition to save BBC children’s television?
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There’s something really special about children’s programmes onCBeebies and CBBC. Every one of us has a show we loved, or knows a 5 year old who spends hours entranced by Iggle Piggle. It’s a shared part of growing up in the UK.
It would be a tragedy if future generations of British kids saw less of educational shows like Teletubbies, In The Night Garden or Blue Peter – and even worse if these were replaced with a diet of cheap American cartoons with adverts in between.
If everyone getting this email signs the petition and shares it with friends and family, we can protect CBBC and CBeebies. And show just how valuable the BBC is to everyone in Britain, old and young.
Please sign the petition now:
PS: This isn’t the only threat to the BBC rumoured to be in the government’s white paper coming out this week. The government may try to attack the BBC’s independence, by giving themselves the power to hand-pick a majority of the board that governs the BBC. That could give government cronies dangerous influence over BBC news. [3]
And they’re also rumoured to want to force the BBC to show their most popular programs at less convenient hours of the day. They want to help channels that show adverts to get more viewers, by dulling down BBC content at peak times. [4]
Banning the BBC from putting its most popular shows in its most popular slots would help Rupert Murdoch to carve out an even bigger profit from his media empire. But the rest of us would lose out as our favourite shows disappeared from the schedule.
So this is going to need a big team effort from 38 Degrees members across the country, all speaking out together against different bits of the government’s plan. To join in with other bits of the campaign to protect the BBC, take a look here:
https://secure.38degrees.org.
NOTES:
[1] The Telegraph: BBC in row with John Whittingdale over ‘top-slicing’ licence fee to fund kids TV:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
[2] We’d march in the streets to defend BBC, say peers and stars:
http://www.theguardian.com/
[3] BBC fears government will win battle to impose board members:
http://www.theguardian.com/
[4] The Guadian: Threats to shift Strictly are just part of the plan to sabotage the BBC:
http://www.theguardian.com/
