S is for Science

Using the words 'science', 'documentary' and 'children' in the same sentence is the quickest way to lose a commission. Haunted by memories of the flickering, black and white, educational films that discouraged countless school children from considering a lab coat career, broadcasters are reluctant to embrace youth-oriented science docs. Today's kid audience, it seems, prefers factual programs. 'There are two kinds of broadcasters,' says Olivier Bremond, managing director of Paris-based Marathon Productions. 'One doesn't even want to hear the word documentary. The other is willing to look at something that's a little different, but if we say 'documentary for children,' they get negative about it. We always call it a children's series, not a documentary series.'Colin Nobbs, executive producer of The Big Bang, a six-year-old science and discovery program produced by U.K.-based Yorkshire TV for commercial broadcaster ITV, has a similar reaction to the 'D' world. 'We avoid doing anything that program makers would recognize as a documentary,' he says. 'Our feeling is if you have anything like a talking head on a show, it's a switch off for kids. That's not to say they don't watch factual programs. The truism of a young audience is that they're voracious in their appetite for information and knowledge. They really want to learn and know. But, you have to know how to frame that information for them.'