RTÉ’s two new programme blocks for younger audiences started on Monday, September 20th when, after a 24 year residence, ‘The Den’ gave way to RTEjr and TRTÉ – the former targeting 6 year olds and those younger between 8.30am and 3pm and the latter scheduled for 7 to15 year olds from 3.30pm to 5.30pm. To mark this new schedule IFTN spoke with Commissioning Editor for RTÉ Television’s Young Peoples Programming, Sheila de Courcy about making history, RTÉ’s support for Irish animation and choosing the new Young Peoples presenters from 700 applicants.
As RTÉ Television’s Commissioning Editor for Young Peoples Programming, Sheila de Courcy has made a bold move in shaking up a long established programming format for younger audience members. She explains that the introduction of RTÉjr and TRTÉ is merely a way of bringing Ireland up to speed with the rest of the world: “I think we all know that the core thing is that children’s television differs completely from adult television,” she begins. “Where adult television is concerned, there’s an understanding of what local is and what RTÉ is, but in children’s television, you’re actually competing with global brands the whole time. So we had to look at global trends and also at the psychological development of children which has really changed in the last number of years.”
Did she have any reluctance in doing away with the format of The Den? Not enormously, it would seem. “Obviously there’s a big reluctance to lose The Den because we’ve got a big brand there that’s been there for a long time,” she starts, before pointing out that, “at the same time the people who are saddest to lose The Den are, in all honesty, middle aged journalists, who are reminded of Mummy and fairy cakes when they see it. Actually the kids don’t know what The Den is - when you know you say to a kid ‘What’s the Den?’ they don’t know what you’re talking about because it doesn’t have any meaning really.”
The young audiences of today are the first to have grown up in a digital age and this, Sheila explains, mean their needs are vastly different to the youngsters of the last two or three decades. “I think that developments in technology over the past five or six years is where effectively, the changes come in,” she explains. “The way people are consuming media and content has changed completely. And the bottom line is that kids are the earliest adopters of new media. So I think that what has happened over the last number of years is that kids are consuming content in an entirely different way.”
This globalisation theme re-emerges as Sheila explains another huge feature that sets this new generation of Irish children apart from its predecessors: Media literacy from a young age. “I think also in Ireland we’re looking at seismic change in our history, for example, if you look at the composition of any classroom, there’ll be kids from a wide range of different backgrounds, which there wasn’t ten years ago. Thinking of my own kids there are 26 different nationalities in their school. In any class there might be kids from seven or eight or nine different countries or more.
“So all of those things are changing and I don’t think that Irish kids are necessarily more precocious, I don’t think that they’re necessarily more sexualised. They aren’t any of those kinds of things, it’s just that they don’t have a sense of belonging on a small island at the edge of the earth. I think we did in the past- we sort of clung on to the UK. Now there are a lot of similarities across the Western world.”
Sheila is obviously aware of the multi-cultural audience tuning in to both RTÉjr and TRTÉ, but what does this mean for Irish language content in Young People’s? “In all honesty, pre-school kids have no issue with Irish one way or the other,” says Shelia. “We have commissioned programmes that use both Irish and English and we also have Irish integrated within our content, but TG4 do a very good job of making Irish language programmes for kids. That’s their remit, it’s not our remit.”
Snippets of Irish language content feature alongside content presented through sign language and Chinese to give children a taste of other cultures, something children are happy to take in once they don’t pick up on any attempts at education, Sheila tells us: “For a ten year old, we have to integrate any language that is not English into the narrative as opposed to it being - in any sense – educational,” she explains. “Television is not educational and I would never want it to be educational. There is an educational undercurrent but it has to come across that we don’t want to preach to kids because they’d just switch off straight away.”
And all this is just the beginning of an exciting wave of new Young People’s content coming to the station, Shelia tells us. “I started commissioning for about six months so I think we’re only at the beginning,” she says. “I think we’ve got a number of very strong series coming up both in-house and commissioned from the independent sector but if there’s one thing I’d love to see from the independent sector it’s that they would have a much better knowledge of who their audience is.
“There’s a tradition in the UK and America for making television for children up to fifteen year olds but in Ireland there can be a lack of knowledge or a lack of understanding on the part of independent producers of who their audience actually is. I’d love to see more reality series but they have to be reality series that are made with respect. We’re doing a reality series called ‘Mission Beach USA’, which is sending eight 16 year olds to Fort Lauderdale to participate in a lifeguard course. And that’s a really interesting series to be doing and the kind of thing kids absolutely love.
And Sheila’s favourite part of the line up RTÉ has for kids? “None of our series are about making anyone feel small,” she answers, without a touch of hesitation, “even 16 year olds. I’d love to see more programmes and documentaries for kids because I think we’re at the beginning of something new. What I would say tough is that I’m hoping that people – producers and directors - will realise that children are a valid audience for their work and will come to me with ideas that show this.”
The Irish animation content on RTÉjr and TRTÉ includes Monster Animation’s ‘Punky’, Kavaleer’s ‘Garth and Bev’ and Kavaleer/Dinamo’s ‘Happy Valley’. In a previous interview with Brown Bag Films’ Cathal Gaffney he bemoaned the lack of support for Irish animation from RTÉ, saying “It really saddens me that RTÉ spends less than half a percent of their independent production unit budget on animation every year, out of between €50 to €60 million they spend €300,000 a year on animation.” When asked if this situation has improved with the introduction of the new programme blocks Sheila is quick to highlight her own set of figures: “In the last four or five years we spent €3 million on animation,” she tells us. “It depends what comes into us – the last five years have built up a lot of animation and in fact Brown Bag Films’ delivered ‘Teenology’ to us, and ‘Grabby Bag’. I think that figures can be used in lots of different ways and the fact is that RTÉ has put over €3 million into animation in the last five years.
“Some years there’s more than others and some years there might be more money than other. So one year there might be €900,000 and another year there might be €300,000, but that’s also dependent on the projects that animators come to us with. I’m here with the animators in Cartoon Forum and I know them well enough. Basically I’m always open to new projects. I’m very excited to see ‘Mad Cows’ here which we sponsored and are involved in, and ‘Tilly and Friends’ which I had sponsored coming here as well from Jam Media. They are two very strong projects that are on the go at the moment. We’ve also got ‘Joe and Jack’ out there and ‘Punky’ is one of ours. There’s a lot of stuff happening.”
As part of the new Young Peoples set-up RTÉ Digital Radio’s RTÉ Junior will now become RTÉjr Radio with complementary services across the day. The new cross-platform offer will also see RTÉ.ie feature associated content online. RTÉjr online www.rte.ie/rtejr aims to be a hub of online entertainment for pre-schoolers. One wonders if Sheila had any reservations as to inviting children to go online and the reaction of parents to this move. Absolutely not, we are told. “No. I think this is similar to the way that people say children watch too much television,” she explains (much to the chagrin of would-be television free household owners). “Parents have a responsibility for their children and online activities are absolutely a normal part of every child’s life, with the exception of a child that does not have access to online. From the ages of 2 or 3 kids are going online. Supervised or unsupervised? That’s between the family, that’s not for me to decide. But we’re providing a safe environment where they can be online without any danger and I think that that’s a very responsible thing to do and I think it’s very progressive of RTÉ. Kids need to be educated about online but they shouldn’t be afraid.”
As to how the new RTÉjr and TRTÉ schedules break down with regards to home produced shows and international shows Sheila tells us Irish content makes up about 50% of the TRTÉ schedule and that there is a minimum of 50-60 minutes of Irish content throughout RTÉjr, which runs daily for six and a half hours. “Certainly in TRTÉ it’s about 50:50,” she tells us. “And then everyday on RTE Jr, there’s a minimum of 50-60 minutes of original material alongside the big brands so it’s very good.
“And there are a number of different things we use - you’re never more than 30 minutes away from Irish content or something Irish. We’ve made 150 short films about children’s lives which will be used throughout the schedule, in addition to all of our programmes, so there’s an ongoing Irish content - everything is bound up within an Irish framework. So it looks very Irish.”
Most of the new presenters for both RTÉjr and TRTÉ were found as a result of a public search that attracted over 700 people: “Around 700 people applied for the talent trawl,” Sheils explains. “We went through everybody and then we did a series of interviews. We went down to the final six and we brought in a very experienced director to work with them and out of that we chose four people.”
At this point, and as a child of the 80s, I find it incumbent upon myself to ask about the loss of The Den - has Sheila fallen victim to complaints from hardened and bitter Dustin and Zig & Zag fans? It would seem so. “I have quite a few people still asking me ‘Why are you losing the brand?’ or ‘Do you realise you’re losing history?” she admits. “But no, we’re making history. We’re making history for children; we’re bringing new icons to kids and we’re bringing new ways of thinking to kids. As adults, we want to hang on to the past but kids don’t know what nostalgia is - they think about yesterday, that’s it.”
RTÉjr and TRTÉ broadcast daily on RTÉ2 from 8.30am to 3pm and 3.30pm to 5.30pm respectively.
