Children are losing touch with British culture, warns BBC chief

25 comments

1. Quick! Force them to watch dads army and eat pork pies!

2. Kids are not watching terrestrial tv and not watching Blue Peter and Eastenders like we did when I was little.

3. What he means is British broadcasters have totally failed to create culture for British children.

   No kids are going to watch Rosie and Jim or The Clangers in 2024. Broadcasters need to develop new cultural icons for kids

4. > Last year only 55 per cent watched broadcast TV every week, down from 81 per cent in 2018, with the majority of their viewing time spent on primetime shows rather than children’s programmes. Audiences in recent weeks for Blue Peter on CBBC and iPlayer have fallen below 50,000.

   This article makes it seem like the primary distribution mechanism of British culture to children is television. That seems pretty depressing.

5. A symptom of the internet and realistically probably one of the better ones. Just recognition (put my hippy hat on) that we are humans on earth not British people in Britain.

   Before people watched and consumed only what they had access to. Nothing has changed but access to media has grown and their is more to pick from.

   To sum up: Mrs Brown’s boys is shit and people would rather scroll insta stories. Woe

   Freedom of choice

6. British culture is essentially a Christian culture.

   This idea we have no culture is ridiculous tbh and another example of how western media has taught young people to essentially de value themselves and their societies.

   The bbc are part of the reason children and young people feel this way.

7. A ‘culture’ relies on a zeitgeist. We’ve lost a lot of that with the rise in streaming television. Kid’s won’t all watch the same shows, won’t have a collective cultural memory of stuff like Blue Peter, He Man or Bob the Builder.

   Stuff has got to be hyper successful and commercialised to do this – e.g. Bluey

8. Bbc ends programming for kids on their regular channels.

   Also bbc: no culture since loss of kids programming on regular channels!

9. I wonder why? Ask any right wingers and their view of British culture is totally toxic and cringe and outdated and tainted with racism.

   Same people also think it’s woke to point out actual interesting parts of British culture and also they think things like science is fake which instantly puts a huge part of British culture out of bounds for them.

   One of the reasons the British empire thrived was due to scientific advances such as vaccination and mathematics and exploring the world. Yet the anti woke brigade cry about vaccines and want to defund education and believe the earth is flat.

10. British Culture isn’t just tv, pubs and music.

    British culture is helping those in need, standing up for injustices, protesting for what you think is right.

    Doing things, even those you don’t want to. Because it’s your civic duty to do so.

    To be British is to stand up for and advocate for what you believe would make the country a better place.

    It’s doing the hard things, not for personal glory. We do it for the good of our communities that we live in and our country.

    I don’t think it’s just children, I believe a lot of people have forgotten what it means to be British.

11. Absolute nonsense from the BBC again!

    So many Tories and RefUK voters howling about the erosion of British culture.

    Each one of them will have produced such a vast opus of contributions to British culture no child in the land could avoid being bathed in culture.

    (Despite the fact, whenever any of them are asked, they can’t name a single contribution of theirs – I’m certain they’re not such abject leaching hypocrites they haven’t contributed a thing)

12. Back in ye olde 80s and early 90s there were only four channels, only two of which had regular programming for kids, so more money went to producing top drawer content.

    Then we got cable with its own dedicated channels for kids, and now there are numerous streaming services, so the talent who would have been spread over two channels, has been diluted down over time.

    Blue Peter also used to bore me to tears. It was always so… dorky.

13. How are the BBC defining British culture? Kids might not be watching TV but are out camping and earning badges with the Scouts or Brownies, that feels quite British.

14. Can somebody please tell me what excalty is “British Culture”….

15. “Children aren’t into the same shit their parents were at their age” , well bugger me, never saw that coming.

16. Expect the usual collection of comments that say there’s no such thing as British culture, that we are uniquely just a blank slate for other cultures (which definitely do exist and should be celebrated) to enrich.

17. What new cultural thing have been created in the last 20 years specifically in the UK? We don’t have anything and you have to go back a lot further to find cultural achievements to be proud of.

18. The BBC should start producing stuff on YouTube for YouTube. Not just repurposing telly clips for online teasers. Get with the times instead of putting all your stock in a dead medium. 

19. You only had 3/4/5 channels back then and the majority was garbage. Children had the choice of two channels at certain times. Now you have freedom from the government mandated channels and can do what you like. Isn’t doing what you like real culture?

20. Why don’t more parents read traditional British fables to their children to keep the culture alive? Beowulf is surely not that boring.

21. The irony of a BBC person trying to comment anything about children

22. Like it or not KSI is probably a bigger cultural touchstone to many kids than anything the BBC puts out

23. [removed]

24. Isn’t it that culture is changing? Can you lose touch with something you never knew.

25. I believe that children are our culture – if you don’t like your eggs, cook and eat the chicken i.e. blame the old.

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