Dyke aims to win over the zap generation

Moving the news hogged the headlines, but the plan for children's TV is the next big battleground.

Immediately after Greg Dyke had faced a public question and answer session at the Edinburgh Television Festival he had a less public gathering with national paper journalists to talk through his thinking on the future of the BBC. At one point he rounded on the bemused representative of The Daily Telegraph, a paper which had criticised Dyke for "dumbing down" by planning to move the news from 9pm to 10pm.

Immediately after Greg Dyke had faced a public question and answer session at the Edinburgh Television Festival he had a less public gathering with national paper journalists to talk through his thinking on the future of the BBC. At one point he rounded on the bemused representative of The Daily Telegraph, a paper which had criticised Dyke for "dumbing down" by planning to move the news from 9pm to 10pm.

"You lot live in this fantasy world," Dyke told him, where people sit down at 6pm and stay tuned in to one channel. It's not like that any more. "Viewers zap from channel to channel."

Of course, ratings figures show that we haven't quite reached the age of the zapping viewer with the minuscule attention span. The main terrestrial channels still get much larger viewing figures than the digital channels. But Dyke is convinced that young people are zap-happy, and that the increasing importance of specialist channels and the electronic programme guide which themes programming will radically alter viewing habits with the onset of the digital age.

That in part explains an announcement in his speech that in the long term could prove more significant than the timing of the main news bulletin.

It is his decision to set up two daytime children's services, one pre-school and one for older children, on the BBC Choice and BBC Knowledge digital channels, eventually to become BBC3 and 4. The BBC may make and show plenty of children's programmes; but on a digital TV's electronic programme guide the BBC does not exist as it does not have a separate children's channel. For that practical reason and a deeper philosophical reason of championing British children's programming, Dyke can be seen as the director general to restore the BBC as the pre-eminent broadcaster of children's programmes.

It also heralds a broadcasting battleground which could soon see seven children's channels. There are already four American children's channels plus GMTV2, a fairly unremarkable cheap cartoon service. ITV sources say that we can expect GMTV to link up with the rest of ITV soon to start a daily children's service on ITV2. The commercial services are clearly worried by Dyke's determination to lead the children's market. Paul Robinson, the head of the Disney Channel in Britain publicly challenged Dyke at the TV festival, accusing him of moving beyond the BBC's public service remit by moving into ground adequately covered, in their view, by the commercial stations.

But Dyke has been impressed by BBC research which shows that parents want children's programmes that are free from advertising, and with far less American material. The Broadcasting Standards Commission has also said that "some of British children's TV programmes are becoming an endangered species". Indeed, all four cable and satellite children's channels carry less than 30 per cent home-made programmes. Dyke also knows that there is a wealth of archive material. Nevertheless, for all the classic serials in the BBC library, a large amount of money will have to be spent on new programming to fill two new daytime services.

Much of the talk at the TV festival was about where all the new money for Mr Dyke's plans is going to come from. He is promising an extra £480m on programmes over the next three years. But individual channel budgets still look unconvincing. The budgets for the new BBC3 and 4 of £140m are less than the budget of Channel 5. It doesn't yet add up. I suspect the first job of the new channel controllers will be to plead for more money.