Hasta La Motion!

Are we creating sensible children programs? Kids’ channels in India are roughly about three per cent of the total number of channels with limited Indian content. Programming for children for television is a responsible job; sensible children’s programming has the objective of making youngsters imbibe a sense of responsibility and morality.

To strengthen the kids’ content industry and bring about sustainability, stability and growth to the artist community and other stakeholders in the industry, India needs a Free-to-Air Terrestrial Kids Channel.

On the third day of FICCI Frames 2017, this burning issue in the Indian media and entertainment industry was addressed. The session ‘India needs a DD Kids Channel’ was hosted by FICCI AVGC Forum, chairman, and Punnaryug ArtVision, founder, Ashish Kulkarni, and a panel of speakers including Supriya Sahu (Doordarshan, director general), P. Jayakumar (Toonz Media, CEO), Rajiv Chilaka (Green Gold Animation, founder), Munjal Shroff (FICCI, co-founder and Graphiti Multimedia, director and COO), Shravan Kumar (Children’s Film Society India, CEO), Shukla Das (filmmaker), Gautam Talwar (Culture Chaant, founding director) and Ketan Mehta (Maya Movies, owner) who shed light on the needs and opportunities of having a DD kids channel.

One point that was unanimously made was that India is rich in culture and that there has to be a way to bring the kids in contact with it through the medium of entertainment. Considering the unique culture of India, our M&E industry cannot give the excuse of not being able to create global content. “Animation is the fastest growing industry when it comes to kids entertainment sector,” said Ketan Mehta. He said that technology is going to drive the mind-space in future and the media can leverage this and capture the mind-space.

The emphasis on creation of kids content will be on rural areas because it consists of a major chunk of kids population in India. Since Doordarshan is the only channel to have such a wide reach, it is the only capable broadcast channel to make kids content available on a wide scale nationally.

Giving example of his five year old daughter, Gautam Talwar shared that he was not happy with the language children used when exposed to the current content for children. Instead of complaining, he thought of finding a solution, which led him to start a YouTube channel called as Jalebi Street, to offer content based on Indian culture. Children form a formidable personality within the first seven years. “They pick up everything from the environment. What they see and what we show,” explained Talwar, stating a research.

Shukla Das, who spent seven years of her career working in Doordarshan, was asked to revamp the kids programming section when she had joined DD. She created conceptual programming, imbibing values such as friendship, morals and learning from mistakes. “Entertainment is natural to learning,” she believed. Children are the future of civilisation and they need to be exposed to the Indian culture through media. Commercial channels cannot do this because they have to earn money. “Only Doordarshan can do this,” Das firmly said.

Through five years of experience, Shravan Kumar said that children like stories. “Once storytelling is done, kids will automatically engage,” shared Kumar. Values, entertainment and learning can easily be communicated once kids are engaged. He believes that the strength of this medium lies in having “a vast resource of stories”. Hence, contribution to invest in future generations should be the top priority of content creators.

The team at Graphiti are passionate about bringing the dying visual culture to life. Through their upcoming show called YOM, they are trying to bring children in contact with our oldest tradition – yoga. The Jungle Book (1967) was Rajiv Chilaka’s first exposure to animation. Quoting Albert Einstein, he said, “When you tell a fairy tale to kids, their minds expand; once their mind expands, it never goes back to the previous level.”

P Jayakumar believes that unless we mold the kids, we cannot have responsible citizens. Creating the right ecosystem, software and programming are the challenges, and the task has to be taken as a social responsibility.

The Doordarshan team travelled extensively to villages to talk to people. Almost every house had a connection except for one. One house did not have a DD Free Dish and Supriya Sahu enquired why it didn’t. The owner of the house replied that the DD dish provided 80 channels but not a single one for kids. “So when children want to watch something, they have no other option but to subscribe to private services,” Sahu said. “So it makes not only a good business sense for DD to launch a kids channel but also important from the Indian context.”

After GEC (general entertainment channels) and movies, kids is the third most emerging genre in terms of viewership and marketing potential, and considering the fact that most of the leading public broadcasters of the world have a kids channel in their network, DD must forfeit this emerging space.

Sahu assured that at DD, they are working hard to create a dedicated Content Think Tank comprising eminent and experienced personalities to rope in the best content and mentor progression. They are building a lean but highly efficient team of individuals to source content, manage transmission and promote and market the channel. The agenda involves development of 1,000 plus hours of content as per the path which will be laid down by the Content Think Tank.

To shape the young impressionable minds, it is significant to cater to children and their parents more substantially and effectively. Content creators and broadcasters should be motivated from within to provide a platform for kids to be inspired by Indian heroes and ethos. Sahu mentioned that they will also collaborate with National Centre for Animation, Visual Effects and Gaming started by ministry of information and broadcasting.

Sahu also gave insights into their revenue sharing model. They plan to have a strong and attractive digital platform to popularise the content and provide a quick medium for feedback by all stakeholders. This will be driven by innovative marketing and promotional mechanism. For a public broadcasting channel, it is not possible to rope in a lot funds for the launch of a channel. “Since we already have so many content creators, why don’t we have a model where we can share,” she said, implying that content can be provided by the creators and they will provide the broadcasting medium.

“We have digitised our terrestrial network,” announced Sahu. What it means is that viewers will be able to view content on their smartphones without having to consume the internet thus avoiding data costs. They have already done this in 19 cities. “Any smartphone will be able to have Doordarshan channels.”

The enlightening session was followed by a few questions and answers. The impact that Indian culture can have on children through the medium of entertainment cannot be undermined, and Doordarshan taking a lead will only increase the scalability of it. To add to it, animators and artists from the leading studios of India extended support. The panel discussion provided a promise of a great prospects in the kids entertainment segment and we eagerly await for a colossal change to happen!

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