Over the last 50 years, the UK has built a reputation for producing some of the most high quality children's programming in the world, including "Listen With Mother", "Thomas the Tank Engine", "Grange Hill", "Blue Peter" and the "Teletubbies". For many years children were happy to sit comfortably and watch with mother, but the last decade has seen enormous changes in children's television viewing. It's currently estimated that around 71% of under 12 year old's have access to a tablet device for viewing.
As part of the live panel discussion, Tina joined fellow leading women in the children's TV industry - Kay Benbow, Controller & Portfolio Head at CBeebies; Anne Wood, Head of Ragdoll Productions, creator of the "Teletubbies"; and Anna Home, Chief Executive, Children's Film and Television Foundation - and presenter Jenni Murray to discuss the current state of children's television, including shows such as Nick Jr. UK's celebrated preschool series "Lily's Driftwood Bay", and, with an increasing range of technology available and a growing number of dedicated children's channels, its future and how children are changing the ways in which they view television.
You can listen to Tina McCann taking part in "Woman's Hour"'s Children's Television debate here on iPlayer Radio!
Tina McCann is the SVP, Managing Director for Nickelodeon UK; where she has overall responsibility for all the network's UK operations and brands, reporting directly to the Board of Nickelodeon UK. She is a highly experienced media executive. After graduating with a degree in English Literature, she joined NBC News, London, in 1981 in an administrative role before moving to NBC Frankfurt to become Bureau Manager. She remained there for seven years, working also as Location Manager throughout Europe. On her return to London in 1989 she joined Lifestyle TV, a women's daytime channel, as Programme Scheduler. In 1993 she became the first employee of Turner Entertainment Broadcasting in EMEA as Programming Director and launched 17 channels (including Cartoon Network and Boomerang) in multiple languages. In her 13 years at Turner she rose to the position of SVP, GM of EMEA and was seconded to China for a year where she launched a joint-venture entertainment channel. She was also a board member of two Turner joint-venture companies in Germany and Italy. She led the largest single project ever undertaken by Turner EMEA, building transmission in house and digitising all content. She left Turner at the end of 2006 to pursue a career in executive and team coaching. She achieved the equivalent of a post-graduate diploma in Executive Coaching from the Institute of Leadership and Management at the beginning of 2008. She then established her own coaching and consulting company, TMc Consulting, and her clients included senior media executives as well as independent producers and writers. She specialised in organisational consulting, leadership and career development. Alongside her coaching and consulting business, Tina established a 360 content company, one six eight, and developed a 'tween'-targetted series, an adult sitcom and an historical series. She returned to Turner in Oct 2009 to work as Acting Childrens Chief Content Officer for EMEA, overseeing original production, acquisitions, franchise management and shared creative services, before joining Nickelodeon UK in 2010.
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