'Hill' creator attacks BBC over kids' TV

Grange Hill creator Phil Redmond has criticised the BBC's children's television agenda after his series was axed.

He said the announcement "comes as no shock" as CBBC recently vowed to focus on younger children rather than his show's high-school-agers.

Redmond, writing in his column in the Liverpool Daily Post, was also philosophical about the cancellation, which came almost 30 years to the day Grange Hill began: "One decision about one programme is not the point as, to quote George Harrison, All Things Must Pass."

He continued, however: "The point is in the mercurial way in which the BBC makes or changes its editorial priorities based on its own survivalist needs, rather than the licence payer’s desires.

"To maintain its size and cost base, it decides to make fewer programmes and plans to withdraw support for things like local radio and public access to the internet. Is that what the public really want?"

Redmond wrote: "While society at large is looking for cultural role models for our children, underpinning growing concern about the lack of home-grown children’s programming, shouldn’t the BBC, our primary public service broadcaster, be doing more, not less, to plug this cultural gap?

"Is setting the age of 12 as the end of childhood a sociological reality or simply a response to falling ratings following the usual failure to keep engaged with and serve a changing audience adequately?"

CBBC controller Anne Gilchrist, announcing that the next series would be the last, said: "The lives of children have changed a great deal since Grange Hill began and we owe it to our audience to reflect this."