Children today have more reasons to be stressed than young people did a generation or two ago, according to executives on the forefront of kids TV programming. Climate change, pandemics, racial reckoning, school violence and the onslaught of confusing social media messaging are raising anxiety among young viewers.
However, these executives say the answer is not to protect kids from knotty problems, but to use entertainment to educate, demystify and give children a chance to become empowered by exposure to problem-solving from a safe distance.
Halle Stanford, president of TV for the Jim Henson Company, said the new landscape for kids was top of mind as the company worked on the reboot of the nearly 40-year-old series “Fraggle Rock,” now reinvented as “Fraggle Rock: Back to the Rock” on Apple TV+.
“When Jim Henson had originally conceived of ‘Fraggle Rock,’ he wanted to create a show that tackled world peace, right?” said Stanford, who joined Tommy Gillespie, senior director of current series for PBS Kids; and Bob Higgins, kids and family EVP for Boat Rocker Media, on a panel moderated by TheWrap’s Diane Haithman. “And so for ourselves, creatively, we thought, what does that look like today?”
Stanford added that while the pandemic has heightened stress for kids, there’s a lot more going on.
“We discovered there were a lot of different topics that were really important to them, everything from social justice issues to boundaries and consent… when we really dug into it, there was a lot of anxiety, toxic stress. I know it sounds really ambitious, but we did try to tackle a lot of those subjects in every episode of ‘Fraggle Rock.’”
Gillespie, who oversaw the 2020 series “PBS Kids Talk About: Race & Racism,” said: “We know that the best thing to arm kids as they face difficult issues in their world is to be able to have those open conversations with their families, to know that it’s OK to have these questions and to have these feelings. Just like Fred Rogers told us more than 50 years ago, what’s mentionable is manageable. So that’s really the place we start.”
Higgins said Boat Rocker Media attempts to “scare not scar” children, giving them exposure to potentially frightening issues as a way to learn how to deal with life outside a protective bubble.
“Have we enabled kids with the coping skills necessary to deal with the unexpected and the scary? Because it’s gonna happen, whether it’s what’s happening now, or losing your job when you’re 24… we can’t protect them forever.”
To view the full WrapPRO panel, click here.
