"the marginalisation of children"

TV On the Blue Peter switch. There's a quote in this Guardian column from Greg Childs, the director of Children's Media foundation which "aims to promote media for children and young people":

"We understand the logic of what they are doing, but there is a symbolism about this that the BBC is not taking into account."

"Our worry is that you are saying to kids, you are no longer on our main channels, you are niche, and that other things might follow. We are always concerned about the marginalisation of children. At some point in the future, if more money is needed for daytime, for example, where is that money going to come from?"

In an ideal world, Blue Peter would continue to have a prime slot on BBC One or BBC Two just before the news (or Eggheads), but tonally it's a different programme to everything else on the channel right now.  The ratings can't justify it either -- the majority of its audience is watching it on CBBC anyway.  But looking at that quote, I wonder if what we're seeing in the diversification of channels across digital services isn't similar to the redevelopment of the BBC's radio networks in the late 60s, but much more gradually.

Then, the Light Programme, Home Service and Third Programme shared audiences and demographics and types of programmes but then rationalised into Radios One to Four splitting their relative audience into demographic groups.  In other words in audience terms, CBBC/BBC Three is Radio One, BBC One/BBC Two is Radio Two, BBC Four is Radio Three and BBC News is Radio Four.  That's not perfect obviously, there's still some cross over, but it's the general sense.

We don't complain much that Radio One doesn't have classical music, just as its odd when Radio Four plays disco as it did the other day when Donna died.  Audiences are happy to be segmented on that service and even more so with the extra digital only stations like 6Music.  It's only really nostalgia which assumes that BBC One should cater for particular niche audiences when there are other channels capable of doing it just as well.  We'll talk about the mess that is BBC Two some other time.