How children's content is being reshaped by digital media

Digital technology is offering a lot more freedom and flexibility in reaching the audience, and because of these opportunities it has to offer, as Peter Maggs, head of New Media at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, explains, “there wouldn’t be many people in our days producing television or film that aren’t thinking in terms of other platforms, and other formats in that digital media”. Maggs recognises how “it’s a natural part of any starting phase when you’re coming up with a concept for a TV or film - how else could this be utilised what other formats could it be shown, what other ways can people interact with this? Otherwise it will be a very outdated mode of operating what you’re talking about just TV and then plonk a website as an after thought later on”.

Jonathan M. Shiff, as a producer of children’s television drama is incredibly concerned with the issue of content, and similarly believes that we need to move beyond using new media technologies as ‘magazine-style publicity’. He states that:


 * “The challenge is to try and think of something organic and that is organically going to work on those platforms. Not just invent something novelty-wise that looks cool on those platforms but has very little power of storytelling … I think a lot of people are doing a lot of groovy things on multimedia platforms but they’re boring and they don’t have the power of character or narrative or story that we specialise in”

While Shiff believes “it’s wrong to run around saying we need to reinvent the narrative structure”, he also recognises that without expanding stories onto digital media platforms the audience will start to drift. However he sees a lot of the existing online content as following the “outdated mode of operating” described by Maggs, where “not a lot of content exists, a lot of it is simply promotional web driven, and quite pedestrian, and is really more about downloads and photos, and you know, it’s publicity”. Shiff explains that in order to move beyond this, you need to figure out “how do you do it so that you’re actually stretching and expanding the adventure and the participation of the central narrative”. As we will discover, this is a very important aspect to the definition of transmedia storytelling

Innovation is not technology driven, it’s ideas driven
Shiff believes, “the challenge that faces a lot of the world’s broadcasters at the moment is that they’ve got all these innovative new delivery media and they don’t have a lot of innovative media … there is a lot of innovation in the way we tell stories but there is not a lot of innovation in the content”. For Shiff, innovative content is the most important factor in a children’s media production, he highlights this through the example of Bus Life, a six-minute series directed by Keith English, Howard Myers:


 * “We recently won a silver medal in New York for Wicked Science – Wicked Science was filmed by 120 people there are 2 series for over 20 million dollars, it’s in 40 or 50 countries worldwide, it’s a very successful series, it won an AFI award hear in Australia – it was beaten in the New York festivals by a series shot on handi-cam by six kids on a London bus, who rented the bus and drove round and round a suburb, called “Bus Life” for the Disney Channel in England. That was more innovative, they only had six crew, they didn’t have like 12 hair and makeup and 18 grips, but it was really interesting and innovative and won the gold medal for the best in the world.  That just shows you that innovative content is not technology or cost driven, it’s ideas driven”.

Both Peter Maggs and Jonathan Shiff recognise that digital media and innovative delivery is a challenge for media producers, and taking advantage of the opportunities the technology affords is important in the creation of stories for children. Shiff is primarily concerned with maintaining the quality of children’s drama stories and strongly believes that “at the end of the day there is no point putting rubbish on, only good stories will work … whether they’re on your watch for five minutes, or like maybe our kids, kids, they’re going to go into their bedroom, go into a hologram and swim with ocean girl, you know, inside the story”. Shiff’s principle for maintaining good quality storytelling has much in common with the defining factors of Transmedia Storytelling, which might suggest that this is a good model for the future direction of Australian children’s television.

LINKS

 * (see Transmedia Storytelling)
 * (see Interview with Peter Maggs: Head Strategist of Kahootz)
 * (see Audio of Interview with Jonathan M. Shiff)
 * (back Investigation and Research (Section 2))