As I get older and more cynical, kids’ TV troubles me. On the one hand, there’s the middle class, hermetically sealed environment of the BBC, where the messages are wholesome and the presenters are clean cut, if a little camp. On the other hand, there’s the commercial masses, ranged against the impoverished ranks of public service broadcasting. The programmes might be similar, but it’s the ads that lurk between, like the rancid meat in a sandwich, which can really screw up a little kid’s mind.

The beasts of merchandising and imported pap are in danger of overwhelming the BBC’s feeble grip on the nation’s young – cable and satellite stations continue to flourish, all driven by increasingly aggressive ad revenue expectations. Soon our children will be sophisticated consumers, selecting their viewing on demand. But we all know what happens when a toddler gets anything on demand. Chaos ensues.

Of course, it’s hopelessly old-fashioned to suggest that advertising corrupts kids. We’ve gone beyond that naïve view. And yet if you watch your own children as they watch these 30 second masterpieces of manipulation, subliminal marketing and over-stimulation of the adrenal glands, you will see how markedly their moods change. If advertising didn’t work, it wouldn’t command such high fees. It does work, all they way from poster to pester, from ad to ‘dad, dad, dad’.

And yet, if the world of kids’ TV goes the way of sport, all the good stuff will be on the commercial channels within a year or so and no-one will watch the BBC’s emaciated, smug output of dusty repeats. And then the ads will be king. We may be a long way from the 1970s – the age of Screen Test, Star Turn and Why Don’t You? – but the message from the last of these still holds strong – ‘turn off your television set and go out and do something less boring instead’. Like shopping, maybe?

SG