Exploring New Approaches to Children’s Broadcast Programme Production: The Concept of Child Participation

Abstract

The paper discusses the phenomenon of child participation in contemporary Ghanaian children's programmes. It is based on an exploratory study of selected programmes - Curious Minds, Choice Children's Channel and Smart Kids - aired on Radio Ghana, Choice FM and Ghana Television respectively. The study examined the production processes and content of the three programmes with a view to establishing the extent to which child participation ideals are incorporated in production. As background to this paper an overview of children's programmes in Ghana before and after broadcast de-regulation in the early 1990s is provided. The concept of child participation is defined. Subsequently, the paper discusses child participation in practice in the light of some critiques and concerns. It examines production approaches employed in the selected children's programmes as well as the content of the three programmes in the light of children's agenda setting roles. Challenges and factors that account for the adoption of particular approaches are further discussed. The paper argues that full child participation holds great promise for transforming content and programme production practices in contemporary children's programmes. However, programmes owned and controlled by children are more likely than those owned by the stations and individual producers to encourage the full child participation approach.