Merlin

Children’s TV – a box of digital delights?

Five members of the band Andy and the Odd Socks stand in a line, posing with their instruments, in front of a blue background

Hands up everyone who was told off for watching too much television. And hands up who watched Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Tele­vision Set and Go and Do Something Less Boring Instead?, the BBC One series that ran between 1973 and 1995. Irony, dead? It was slaughtered, stuffed and displayed behind glass half a century ago.

But what about today’s children? If the primary school pupils of St Peter’s in Newchurch, Lancashire, and Holly Mount in Bury are anything to go by, television viewing is still popular.