Roundtable: Cross-regional children’s content

Children’s broadcasters and producers are navigating a rapidly changing media environment.

Production budgets are under pressure, young audiences increasingly move between broadcast and digital platforms, and new technologies are changing how content can be produced, translated, adapted, and shared.

At the same time, there remains an enormous need for high-quality children’s programming that reflects the lives and experiences of young audiences. 

This session will explore how public media can respond to these changes—and how broadcasters, producers, and other partners might work together to create and share strong children’s content across countries and regions. 

Drawing on Peripheral Vision International’s (PVI) experience producing and distributing educational television across Africa, alongside examples from the wider children’s media landscape, the discussion will consider: 

• What children and families need from public media today, and where broadcasters see the biggest gaps in available programming. 

• What makes content travel across countries and cultures—and when localisation, translation, or adaptation is necessary. 

• How changing production models and emerging technologies, including AI, could make high-quality children’s content more affordable and adaptable. 

• How content can be designed for a multiplatform world, moving between television, streaming, social media, classrooms, and other settings. 

• Whether new models of collaboration could allow public media organisations to share the costs, risks, and benefits of creating children’s programming. 

PVI will share lessons from its own experience creating Emmy and Peabody nominated programming for children and young people, including N*Gen, Prefects, and its new early-literacy series BB’s Book Bus, while inviting PMA members to share their own experiences, challenges, and priorities. 

At the heart of the session is a larger question: What might a new model for creating, adapting, and sharing high-quality children’s public media across geographies look like? 

Participants will have the opportunity to ask questions, share experiences, and discuss challenges with other attendees.

This roundtable is designed for staff at PMA-member organisations and guests working with, or interested in: 

• Children’s, educational, or public-interest media content 

• Content management, commissioning, production, or distribution 

• Broadcast and digital strategies for reaching young audiences 

• Cross-regional collaboration, localisation, and content exchange 

• New models for creating and sharing children’s public media, across Africa and internationally 

Whether your organisation is already producing children’s or educational content, or is exploring new approaches to collaboration, adaptation, and distribution, your participation and insights will be invaluable. 

Peripheral Vision International (PVI) is an Affiliate Member of the Public Media Alliance.  

The media development and public interest NGO specialises in creating innovative “edutainment” content to reach marginalised communities in some of the most remote regions of the world. 

PVI’s mission is to use media, technology, and popular culture to catalyse social change in Sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. Working in a multidisciplinary team and together with partners, PVI designs and tests communication on health, gender, livelihoods and citizenship for hard-to–reach and marginalized populations.  

PVI has produced award-winning content for public broadcasters and other media around the world. This includes N*Gen, a next-generation STEM television program promoting a culture of holistic learning and development that is broadcast across Africa, and mobile phone interventions such as Wanji Games.