There are over two billion children worldwide under the age of 18, who are targeted by an increasing number of television channels solely dedicated to them. As such globally circulated programmes and networks expand their reach using digital platforms, is there a need – and room for – locally produced television content for young people? From the perspective of national media policy advocates, locally developed, produced and broadcast programmes can provide children with a sense of their own place in an increasingly complex globalized media landscape and ensure that programmes are developed with the interest, perspective and views of local children in mind. This article explores the dichotomy between ‘local’ and ‘global’ television content targeting children in the context of debates on media globalization. Our three case studies from radically different media policy environments, focus specifically on locally produced content offered on dedicated national children‘s digital television channels launched locally to promote the cultural heritage of a specific nation or region. They provide concrete examples of how local content is conceptualized and what types of content children have to choose from. Our findings are paradoxical. Although each channel has been created to speak back to dominant audio-visual children’s flows from the periphery, our findings are that the better funded nationally based dedicated children’s channels have grown into successful market players beyond original national boundaries. The first case study examines dedicated local children’s provision in New Zealand, focusing on TVNZ6, a digital children‘s channel that operated as part of the public service broadcasting sector. The second case study focuses on children‘s television content in Hungary and uses the case of Minimax Hungary, an Eastern European regional commercial network targeting children growing up in a dynamically transforming post-communist media system. The third case study looks at television content produced in the Middle East by focusing on Al Jazeera Children’s Channel (JCC), a pan-Arabic non-commercial edutainment channel established in Qatar and funded by the Qatar Foundation.

This report describes the outcomes of extensive research (questionnaires, focus groups, drawings) on the media use of students aged between eight and 13 years (n=860) in the North and South Islands of New Zealand. The research replicates earlier child-centred research by the authors, but with a greater emphasis on newer media technology, such as cell phones. The various facets of the research, framed within theoretical explorations, produced detailed and often candid insights into the role played by contemporary media in the lives of New Zealand children with respect to the overt and covert use of technology, shifts in relationships between children and adults. It also generated some interesting cautionary tales.

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This article examines children's television production discourses. It first contextualises how regulations in New Zealand shape the children's broadcasting environment, then it asks producers of children's programs to describe how they go about creating public service programs for children within a complex media political economy. Several questions are addressed, with a key one examining how producers imagine their audiences and construct appropriate public spaces for them within the current constraints of funding and advertising regulation. The field research is based on extended face-to-face interviews conducted in 2009 with producers, a free-to-air television programmer and the television managers for the two funding agencies, New Zealand On Air (NZOA) and Te Māngai Pāho (Māori language media funding).

This chapter explores the dichotomy between “local” and “global” television content targeting children in the context of debates on media globalization. Our three case studies – TVNZ6 in New Zealand, Minimax in Eastern Europe, and Al Jazeera Children's Channel in the Middle East – focus specifically on locally produced content offered on thematic children's television channels launched to promote the cultural heritage of a particular nation or region. Operating in small but radically different media environments on different continents, these channels provide concrete examples of how local content is conceptualized and what types of content are being offered and produced for children today.