Exclusive: BBC kids’ chief Patricia Hidalgo talks co-productions, risk-taking & UK animation

Captain Onion’s Buoyant Academy For Wayward Youth

In a wide-ranging conversation, Mark Layton talks to BBC kids’ chief Patricia Hidalgo about the UK pubcaster’s content demands, the myriad challenges facing the children’s sector and her mission to create more local animation.

As director of children’s and education for the BBC, Patricia Hidalgo holds arguably one of the most important roles in shaping the landscape of kids’ programming in the UK.

In her position at the public broadcaster, which is the biggest commissioner of children’s content in the country, Hidalgo is responsible for leading the department’s operations and content strategy across the BBC’s Bitesize, CBeebies and CBBC services, as well as for kids programming on VOD platform, BBC iPlayer.

Her division commissions and acquires content for children aged 0-12 across all genres, from cartoons to news, with a remit to broadcast shows that inform, educate and entertain young audiences through local commissions. What she is looking for right now is “scripted comedy and drama, original UK animation and compelling, ambitious, factual entertainment covering the whole breadth of contemporary children’s interests,” Hidalgo tells TBI.

BBC Children’s is known for taking risks and making new formats and shows no commercial channel would dare make for children

BBC Children’s and Education will be ordering around 350 hours of original content for 2023/24, but those slots have almost already been filled, she says.

“In the case of factual, entertainment and drama, timing for commissioning of this content can be from six months to one year before we need the show on-air. On the other hand, when it comes to animation, we do tend to commission much further in advance, sometimes up to two years before we need it.”

These lead times are only expanding, says the exec, with it becoming “harder and harder to find all the third-party funding we need to commission some of our shows.” For this reason, the gap between commission and production is getting longer, she adds.

Money is tight all round, with the rising cost of production hitting the whole industry. Added to that, the UK TV licence fee, the BBC’s primary source of funding, was frozen by the government until 2024, compounding the issue for the pubcaster.

What the BBC can contribute towards a production “really depends on the show, where it is produced, how much the producer can raise, if it is a UK show or a foreign commission, if it is hyper-local, or if it has got potential to find international sales or co-producers,” says Hidalgo, who joined from WarnerMedia in 2020.

“Our needs are many, our funds are limited and we have a set of obligations. Our primary remit is to bring the best content to our UK audience whilst we also support the UK creative industry, so our contribution will take all these parameters into consideration before we decide how much we can or should invest.”

Patricia Hidalgo

Seeking partnerships

One way in which Hidalgo is looking to make her budget go further is “by increasing our co-pro partnerships and by looking very carefully at what we greenlight. There is no space for shows that don’t help us build iPlayer.”

There is also a balance to be had: “BBC Children’s is known for taking risks and making new formats and shows that no commercial channel would dare make for children,” says Hidalgo. But that doesn’t mean shows can’t return, with ground-breaking titles of their time such as Numberblocks, which teaches mathematics to children from the age of four, and historical sketch comedy show Horrible Histories, “which after 13 years… is still a huge success.”

Hidalgo tells TBI that co-productions have become “an essential part of our strategy” and highlights three projects for which she is actively seeking partners: pre-school series The Underglow; animated comedy adventure for 7-9-year-olds Captain Onion’s Buoyant Academy For Wayward Youth; and dialogue-free slapstick animated comedy Duck And Frog.
These three shows are the animation finalists from the Ignite initiative, launched by Hidalgo in 2021 to unearth new animation talent and create more homegrown series that reflect the lives and culture of UK kids – and to specifically offer young viewers an alternative to imported American cartoons.

“Animation is the most watched and loved medium in TV for kids. The UK is one of the most talented and creative countries in the world when it comes to making TV programmes, and especially those for children. So many world classics and big TV animated pre-school children’s brands have been created by British writers, creators and animation talent, from Winnie The Pooh to Peppa Pig.

“But one thing that’s missing today is enough British animated titles for those aged seven and older. Most animated TV shows that kids consume today are coming from the US. The common language is our biggest problem. It means easy access for US studios and cheaper shows for most UK broadcasters to just acquire this US content.”

Hidalgo says it is “imperative” that children over the age of seven start watching locally produced animation that has “British values and represents the UK culture.”

Duck And Frog

Original content focus

While BBC Children’s and Education does acquire international content, it represents “a small percentage of our total content spend”.

Australian animation Vegesaurs and evergreen Japanese favourite Pokémon are currently among the BBC’s most successful acquisitions, but the primary focus remains on originals.

International hit Bluey, which is a co-commission between Australia’s ABC and BBC Studios, and Hey Duggee and Bing, are doing “great numbers” for pre-schoolers on CBeebies, while Supertato, co-produced by BBC Studios Kids & Family and China’s Tencent has also proved popular.

Then, for the 7-10 age group, live action comedy Odd Squad and animation Boy Girl Dog Cat Mouse Cheese, factual entertainment shows Horrible Histories and Operation Ouch! and period dramas Dodger and Mallory Towers are all top performers.

“Older kids, 10-12, have also reacted very positively to new seasons of our ongoing football drama Jamie Johnson, as well as a new entry A Kind of Spark, both titles hitting top CBBC spots on iPlayer,” while school drama Phoenix Rise and The Next Step have “done phenomenally well” with the harder to reach 13-15 demos.

Bluey

Kids sector challenges

American imports are not the only thing pulling children away from local programing, with digital platforms such as YouTube, gaming and social media all competing for their attention. The BBC knows it needs to be on these platforms to maintain and grow brand awareness, says Hidalgo.

“We have devised a strategy to reach them in these other platforms, whether it is with an event to view the first episode of the new season of The Next Step live with the cast on TikTok, or a new themed game of Jamie Johnson on Roblox.”

And these efforts appear to be paying off, reveals the exec: “We recently launched a Newsround channel on TikTok, which is actively bringing back audiences to our Newsround online offer every day and that’s very encouraging.”

There’s also the competition from global streamers, with their deep pockets and even deeper children’s programming libraries, but Hidalgo is confident in the BBC’s position as a broadcaster straddling both linear and digital to differentiate its offering.

“It’s a very competitive landscape out there, and yes, we have suffered like everyone else from the increased competition as well as the flood of new children’s content coming from the US that UK kids have access to today. We do have one thing US streamers don’t, and that’s both a linear and a VOD platform that can complement each other.”

BBC Children’s uses its linear channels as family co-viewing opportunities and marketing windows, and Hidalgo says there has been a correlation between new children’s brands being launched and promoted on these channels and their immediate pick-up by viewers when then launched on VOD service iPlayer.

The kids’ exec is not averse to co-producing with the streamers either, so long as it doesn’t compromise the public broadcasting remit. “We have done quite a few [co-productions] and share acquired content between us,” she says. “Disney, like us, also acquired Bluey for the UK, and we have a couple of co-pros with Netflix, The Worst Witch and Get Even. But we will not do co-pros with content that clearly defines who we are.

“It all depends on what, when, as well as how much we are investing, but yes, we are very much open to sharing acquired content and co-producing new shows with everyone.”

Phoenix Rise

Tax incentives required

The challenges faced by the UK children’s content industry are myriad: while streamers and new media are drawing audiences away, the biggest problem for producers, as ever, is financing.

Many in the sector lamented the loss of the BFI’s Young Audiences Content Fund last year (though the BBC did not join the scheme), which saw rivals ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5 use government money to support the creation of content for young viewers.

“In general, the BBC doesn’t believe contestable funds are the best way to address failure within the market, which is why we did not participate. The government also felt that a contestable fund was not the most suitable way forward either,” says Hidalgo.

The exec instead suggests that there are other initiatives that could help to solve the problem of the lack of investment in “culturally relevant British content” for children.

“We recently saw a change to UK production tax credits. Whilst we welcomed this increase, unfortunately it is still not competitive enough if compared to the European Union (EU).

“I believe we can go further; an extra tax incentive to take the current UK tax rebate to somewhere between 30% to 35% to match what other EU markets have, which is linked directly to a point system to deliver enhanced culturally relevant content for UK children.

“This would generate further investment in British content made primarily for a British audience, but which could also have international appeal, increasing co-pro possibilities between broadcasters in the UK and other countries,” says the former Disney exec.

Whatever the future holds, Hidalgo doesn’t believe “this failing children’s industry” is out of the woods yet. “In the last 10 years, new streamers and pay-TV competitor channels have been commissioning, producing and acquiring so much more content for children than ever before, but they have now stopped doing as much.

“The UK TV industry is not just local; it is global, and anyone you talk to is in the same position – there is less investment and less money overall for children’s content. I think we are going to see more consolidation of studios and TV networks and more sharing of programmes and rights across the board globally.”