LOUISA CLEAVE meets a producer at the cutting edge
of kids' TV.
What do you do when you create a hit children's television show but see nothing of the $100 million-plus revenue it generates in sales and merchandise?
If you are Helena Harris, the producer behind Bananas in Pyjamas, you invent another kids' phenomenon - and make sure you have a stake in it.
Harris has no hard feelings over Bananas. She was, after all, an employee of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation when she came up with the idea for B1 and B2, and the public broadcaster kept the copyright to the show.
Three years ago she established her own production company, Kids Like Us, with business partner Posie Graeme-Evans and the pair created Hi-5 (TV2, 7.55 am).
The show, which screens on Channel 9 in Australia, is into its second series and giving The Wiggles a run for their merchandise.
From the start, says Harris, kids couldn't get enough of Hi-5 gear, which ranges from duvet covers to clothing, mini-tapedecks to videos.
The studio-based show features five performers, aged from 19 to 26, in funky dress delivering a new style of pre-school song-and-dance education in pop-chart fashion.
"We felt that this age group hadn't had anything really new created for them in a while," Harris says.
She wanted to give kids a show which was not created 35 years ago, as were Here's Humphrey and Playschool.
"There's been an enormous amount of research done in children's education over those 35 years and we wanted to incorporate all of that.
"We have a range of early childhood advisers who have been able to bring us new ways of working with children. So while we make sure the show is entertaining we also ensure that every segment has an educational base. Even the dances that we do have been specially choreographed to integrate right and left hemispheres of the brain, which will help children learn to read."
Harris says children's television in Australia has been in good health for 10 years - unlike the New Zealand industry, which according to some is in serious trouble.
New Zealand On Air points out that broadcasters will not commission the genre without its financial assistance and "the overall reduction in children's hours is directly connected to NZ On Air's funding constraints."
Hi-5 is made under a quota requirement of commercial broadcasters set by the Australian Broadcasting Authority. But Harris says it is also the first pre-school show to receive substantial funding by a commercial network.
"[The commercial networks] left it entirely up to the ABC, which operates under its own charter with no specific amount of children's programming hours.
"[The ABC] has cornered children's television because it has so little competition from the commercial channels, which have to put out something like 130 half-hours of first-run pre-school television a year. They have made it as cheaply as they could get away with."
Harris says a quota system in New Zealand is not necessarily the answer to the woes of children's television.
"The benefits are that you get more local content [but] it doesn't necessarily mean you will get the best shows."
Harris is impressed with what she has seen of New Zealand children's television and has discussed shooting some of the next Hi-5 series here with local kids.
"I've just been saying that we should come over here and shoot New Zealand children doing the things we have shot Australian children doing, so we can have some Maori children, faces that New Zealand children recognise. Seeing their own faces on screen is undoubtedly important."
How the box comes alive for viewers under five
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