Children in the Age of Interactivity and Digital TV - The Challenges and Opportunities

This speech, 18 pages in length, was given at the opening of the TV de Calidad Conference in Bogota, Colombia, which was held from October 30 - November 1 2008. It was delivered by Greg Childs, who has worked for approximately 25 years as a director, producer, programme commissioner, and strategist in children's media. Since 1998, he has been active in designing interactive multimedia strategies for engaging, educating, and entertaining children and young people around the world. Childs here defines the interactive digital experience for children, reviewing Colombia's media approach to children and youth - particularly relevant considering that Colombia and several other Latin American countries are in the process of adopting new systems of digital television and new ways to communicate.

As an interactive consultant, Childs is convinced that interactivity does not replace conventional media forms; he tells his clients that he will advise them on the appropriate use of interactive media for their brand or project. "I believe that if an interactive experience is not meaningful both to the user and to the provider - if it doesn't make sense to connect interactivity and a particular media experience - then it should not be forced onto either."

Childs begins by noting that many of the projects being undertaken in Colombia are already integrating an interactive experience, which he defines as "one in which the audience not only receives media content, but in some way reacts with the content to shape or change it in some way, to produce a new and often individual, personalised experience of that content." 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.
• Televisión de Calidad, and its use of an online community to foster awareness and campaign for quality in children's media.
  

Interaction can take many forms, Childs explains. It can be as straightforward as a well-crafted television programme that - without any electronic mediation - encourages the child to "join in" by calling out responses to the screen, singing or dancing along, or rushing from the room because they've been encouraged to try something they had just seen on the TV programme. That is to say, Childs emphasises that there is nothing new in trying to get an audience to interact; "[i]t doesn't matter what the technology is - it's the thought that goes into the experience that counts!" For example, in 1958 a British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) children's programme called Blue Peter was introduced that solicited letters from the audience with ideas for what should be included in the show. Every child who wrote got a reply; every idea that was accepted was rewarded with a Blue Peter badge.

That said, "interactive digital technology brings greater speed and a more direct user-experience, than anything possible before." Furthermore, Childs stresses, children and youth "adopt new technology readily and adapt to it quickly." Their experience in collaborating over projects, using educational software, playing electronic games, and so on "makes them ready to be the co-editors of the content they consume."

Childs discusses several elements crucial to a conception of interactivity:

• Choice - with digital TV and broadband internet, audiences have far greater choice over what they watch, and when and where they watch it.
• Taking that concept of decision-making into game-play creates much greater immersion in the experience than passive viewing. "In the younger audience in particular, engagement is stronger, loyalty grows, the feeling of ownership is more powerful and a sense of empowerment" supports the creation of a meaningful experience that captures players' imaginations.
• There is an ability to "talk back", lending an interactive "contribution" to programmes or websites.
• Drawing together the audience as a community - well-thought-out systems to ensure safety and security can allow children to participate in ways which are empowering and inclusive.
• The extent to which in new delivery systems such as digital TV and the internet there are opportunities for the audience, or the users, to marry their communication habits with their consumption habits. That is, interactive media allows is for conversations of this sort to be immediately and directly connected to the media experience - to surround it in a sense - and again this is very interesting for producers who want to connect with their audiences.
  

Childs concentrates mainly on how digital television can deliver some of these interactive features. For example, the possibility of many additional channels "provides a fantastic opportunity for at last getting some dedicated broadcast space for children's programmes." He also discusses time-shifting technology such as the personal video recorder (PVR) and video on demand (VOD). In Colombia, broadband internet penetration is still low, Childs observes, but digital TV can create interactive content around programme brands. He elaborates that, "with schemes such as Un Minuto por Mis Derechos maybe we are seeing the beginnings of a movement towards media education which can be developed over time to allow more access to the media for kids' own content."

Interactive applications are delivered using spare bandwidth available on digital channels, Childs explains. They are like extra bits of content hidden from view normally but available to be called up by the viewer if they are wanted. Navigation around the content is done via the colour and arrow buttons on the remote control. It's effective because it's immediately available, Childs says. He notes that it is also possible to deliver additional streams of video within the same channel. Childs provides a number of examples - among them, the BBC Factual department, which built some educational and fun explorations of major factual programmes by constructing separate detective stories associated with things you might have learned while watching the programme. This reinforces the learning, Childs surmises. The problem is that many of the experiments are impractical in the real commercial world; cost will be a huge issue in Colombia.

Childs discusses his own experience with the BBC's creation of iTV games – especially around the pre-school brand CBeebies. When he was developing the BBC Children's channels which eventually launched in early 2002, he wanted to have complementary internet services associated with each of the brands and also needed to launch the first interactive television for children in the UK. He chose the pre-school brand to be the lead for a service of simple interactive games. The BBC's pre-school websites were already enormously successful, and parents of pre-schoolers are always on the look-out for great content to help educate their kids. For young children, the proposition worked, and this "is still working today", remaining "as popular as ever."

Childs explores the power of cross-media, noting that it is vital that a website associated with a programme - especially a children's programme - carries through the ethos of the programme content (its style) but also develops and extends the experience the audience receives from that programme. According to Childs, "[t]his is a fantastic opportunity for learning resources associated with entertainment shows, for example. Capture the audience with a gameshow, or a comedy and then take them online to play an interactive game around the same activities or using the same characters - a game which in its design can also educate them.... Interactive education is far more effective than passive learning, so the web is a more effective medium for the delivery of learning than TV....If you can get a child to engage with a topic not by reading about the facts but by experiencing something of the world through a simulation in game play, you will have captured their interest and the learning will stick."

All of the services Childs describes up to this point in the speech are delivered to the TV or the set-top box (which is essentially a dedicated computer to decode the digital signals) at the same time as the TV signals. But it is also possible to draw on the "return path", which is the ability of the box or TV set to "talk back" to the broadcaster. The BBC has used this system for a variety of interactive shows, creating the equivalent of live national surveys, for example.

Looking at the intersections between interactivity and community, Childs admits that, "[w]ithout the ability to chat in text or audio interactive television lacks some of the most powerful drivers of activity on the internet – communities of game-players, of friends on Facebook, or of knowledge sharing. None of this is easy via iTV....But it might be possible to work out ways of mixing mobile text messaging and interactive television..."

In conclusion, Childs notes that:

• Interactive television on digital TV is a valuable enhancement to content, especially in the educational context.
• It can offer greater choice of content and it can offer relatively simple game-play options, which are most appropriate to younger viewers.
• It can offer an immediate method for audience participation, and for gathering data and opinion, but it lacks the sophistication and depth that the internet can now provide.
• However that sophistication only really comes into play with broadband delivery, so in place of widespread personal computer (PC) ownership and expensive connectivity, "iTV in Colombia would seem to be a real force for good."
• It can bring greater depth to programme experiences, greater enjoyment, a much stronger feeling of involvement and above all possibilities for education even if only for younger children.

"Children are ready for these forms of participation and interaction because they are open to new technology, accept innovation, and embrace new styles of content on TV and online. They readily mix media consumption and play. Television at its best has always fed their imagination and enriched their experience of the world. Now the new digital technologies add immediacy and power to that process. The blending of play and content consumption provides a richer experience than mere passive viewing, so that the enjoyment is greater, the experience more vivid and the learning more powerful. Embracing the digital future means embracing kids with all their potential for curiosity, fun and personal growth."

Childs discusses some challenges, too. Very little of this is possible without funding for quality content, which will not come from commercial sources alone. There has been a proliferation of international channels - programming that "could in theory lead to greater cross-border understanding, [but] in reality seeing one's own locality, hearing one's own stories and seeing oneself (or people very like oneself) portrayed on TV is the first pre-requisite for healthy kids, connected to the societies in which they live, proud of their culture and able to face the world with confidence." Thus, "the ultimate challenge is to support one’s own culture, protect one’s own society, and above all develop the talents and imaginations of one’s own young people – and to find the will and the means to do so."

Click here to access the full speech as a Microsoft Word document.