Need for ABU Producers to be trained on Digital Content

ABU Children’s TV Programme Item Exchange and Meeting were held from 6-10 July in Kuala Lumpur with twenty-five participants from eleven member organisations.

In his opening remarks, the Director of ABU Programming Department, Mr Tatsuhiro Beniko set the tone by reminding participants that today children are accessing video content not only on television but also on other platforms and this meeting will offer an opportunity to share views, thoughts and ideas in this changing media environment.

The meeting was chaired by Ms Hyunsook Chung from EBS-Korea and Ms Sakura Ono from NHK-Japan, both of whom invited all producers present to be brave and to voice out their comments on the programmes. “Quality and inspiration for Children are two key words in our endeavour”, Ms Chung said.

During the meeting, extracts of 43 items from ABU members and 38 from EBU (European Broadcasting Union) members of children’s programmes were screened and gave rise to lots of constructive comments from all participants.

On Thursday 9 July, John Millner – independent media consultant and ex-executive producer at BBC Learning, UK, conducted a workshop with the theme “From Children’s Programme to Children’s Content”. He focused on why and how educational and children’s media is increasingly moving toward online, from TV screen to mobile devices. Mr Millner believes that TV producers today must think of themselves as digital content producers as well.

One of the participants, Ms Hyun Kyung Chung from EBS-Korea said she has learned a lot from her colleagues, and as a young producer of children’s programmes she is now convinced that she will do better in her job.

Participating organisations were: BTV-Bangladesh, EBS-Korea, LNTV-Laos, NBT-Thailand, NHK-Japan, SLRC-Sri Lanka, ThaiPBS-Thailand, TRT-Turkey, TVK-Cambodia and VTV-Vietnam.