The Wombles of… Central Park!

So what are they doing to campaign to change this situation? Visit the Save British Kids TV!* site and you will find those eco-warriors, the Wombles of Wimbledon Common have been transported to Central Park:

OK, quiz time. How many of the ‘real’ owners of the voices can you spot? My namesake from Family Guy provides one of the voice overs, but I don’t recognise all of them.

On a more serious note, whilst I support he idea of producing quality TV for children, I don’t think that all imported “kids TV” is junk, or that all home-grown “kids TV” is great. I still have very fond memories of watching whimsical Czechoslovakian cartoons as a child. I used to love Sesame Street. Imported programmes can be high quality and can reflect children’s lives. In fact, isn’t “kids TV” an imported term?

Looking closely, I note that the 1% refers only to new UK programmes – so repeated UK programmes aren’t included. Hmm, I smell carefully massaged statistics here. 1% does seem very low, but I am somewhat suspicious as to how the figure was arrived at. What is a new programme? One shown for the very first time? If it is repeated later in the day, or week, is it still new the second time it is shown?

I do support the idea of quality children’s programmes being produced in the UK, but I am concerned that this campaign seems to be based on a rather misleading statement. What does everyone else think?

*Apostrophe Police, please note: I know that “Kids TV” [sic] has an apostrophe, I’m quoting their title here!