A National Study on Children's Television Programming in Canada provides an overall look at children’s programming in Canada, what its strengths are, what new paths should be considered and how to better understand the media's impact on young people.
The study, conducted for the Alliance for Children and Television with research led by the Université de Montréal communications department's Centre for Youth and Media Studies, under the supervision of Dr. André H. Caron, Ed. D., was designed to study the media landscape of children’s programming for 2-12 year olds for both English- and French-speaking children across Canada.
Canadian National Study on Kids TV
Here are some of the key findings of the study:
- Analysis shows that both educational and specialty broadcasters account for more than 90% of children’s programming in Canada (41% and 49%, respectively), while only 9% is provided by public generalists and a mere 1% by private generalist broadcasters.
- The top 100 programs analyzed showed that children ages 2-11 are overwhelmingly watching children’s programming.
- Analysis shows that both educational and specialty broadcasters account for more than 90% of children’s programming in Canada (41% and 49%, respectively), while only 9% is provided by public generalists and a mere 1% by private generalist broadcasters.
- When it comes to program genre, animation is overall the most dominant genre in children’s programming. It especially predominates in preschool programming, with two out off three programs being animation.
- When looking at main characters’ racial profile, a large majority of human-type characters were identified as European white.
- In terms of portrayal of minority groups, Canadian children’s productions did not differ much from the Canada Census data, showing a relatively similar representation of Blacks, Latinos and, to a lesser extent, Asians.
- Male characters were much more prevalent than female ones (nearly two to one) on children’s television. Gender and age representation differences were also found for humantype characters: more adult males are shown than females and more teenage females portrayed than males.
- Proportionally, young Canadians preferred more Canadian content than what was actually available.
Recent Comments