TIME SHIFT: CHILDREN'S NEWS
Tuesday 29 May 2007 7.30pm-8.10pm; 11.20pm-midnight; 2.20am-3am
Children's newsreels in the 1950s considered golden hamsters and how to make a cricket bat the burning issues of the day. In the 21st century, the media-saturated audience can expect to see hard-hitting reports of disasters as well as a plethora of entertainment stories.
John Craven pioneered Newsround on a shoestring budget in 1972, persuading real journalists to file bulletins on the chance their own children might see it. Reporters including John Humphries and Krishnan Guru-Murthy were regulars on the programme and in an interview Michael Buerk recalls how the stories he filed for Newsround were some of his toughest assignments.
Time Shift explores the significance of children's programmes in developing young people's world view, but also questions why children's news is the one genre of output conspicuously absent from channels other than the BBC.
