Tag Archives: youth

In the 1960s, Joan Ganz Cooney published The Potential Uses of Television in Preschool Education, a report that would revolutionize television for children. Where others saw a “vast wasteland,” Cooney saw possibility, and from it, educational programming for children, like Sesame Street and Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, was born. Half a century later, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center and Corporation for Public Broadcasting seek to carry forward this vision of programming with the By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences…

On January 26,  2021, the Cooney Center’s Executive Director Michael Preston and Senior Fellows Monica Bulger, Mary Madden, and Rafi Santo presented a session called Tweens and Teens: Public Media’s Missing Audience at the 2021 National Educational Telecommunications Association (NETA) Conference and CPB Public Media Thought Leader Forum. The goal of the session was to share findings from our latest research on tweens and teens and their media habits, as well as ideas and opportunities for public media to serve…

The following post is part of a series springing from the Cooney Center’s joint initiative with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. This is a project aimed at exploring the role of public media in the lives of young people by taking stock of the current landscape and imagining a future that public media can build alongside teens and tweens. With that in mind, we are inviting public media practitioners who are already experimenting…

Growing up, I was used to being the “only one.” I was the only Black girl in many of my elementary school classrooms, newspaper staff, debate team, and even in college lectures at the University of Virginia. That anxious feeling of being surrounded by faces that were not like my own was a familiar one. As an aspiring journalist, I expect I will often be the “only one” in the workplace. While 38% of newsrooms have made diversity gains in…

For nine months, we have been living in the midst of a pandemic that has thrust us all into a “new normal.” Teachers and students across the country have been thrown into an abrupt experiment in remote learning since the spring. Stark equity issues have come into view, and education leaders are worried about the long-term impact of learning loss, particularly among children from lower-income families. And the stress of isolation from peers and the lack of social interaction has…

Unlike kids in the 70s, tweens and teens today are posting, dancing, and streaming across platforms from TikTok to Twitch. They have no interest in being corralled to discrete brands or destinations. They enjoy a banquet of high-quality digital offerings that are ready when and where they are. And they’re always one step ahead of us. While just about everything has changed in terms of media consumption, something essential has not: kids’ curiosity and desire for agency. The Corporation for…

The following post is part of a series springing from the Cooney Center’s joint initiative with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. This is a project aimed at exploring the role of public media in the lives of young people by taking stock of the current landscape and imagining a future that public media can build alongside teens and tweens. With that in mind, we are inviting public media practitioners who are already experimenting…

The following post is part of a series springing from the Cooney Center’s joint initiative with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. This is a project aimed at exploring the role of public media in the lives of young people by taking stock of the current landscape and imagining a future that public media can build alongside teens and tweens. With that in mind, we are inviting public media practitioners who are already…

The following post is part of a series springing from the Cooney Center’s joint initiative with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, By/With/For Youth: Inspiring Next Gen Public Media Audiences. This is a project aimed at exploring the role of public media in the lives of young people by taking stock of the current landscape and imagining a future that public media can build alongside teens and tweens. With that in mind, we are inviting public media practitioners who are already…

“It’s hard to think of a more important audience than kids who are developing their sense of self and their connections to their communities all in this fairly messy and quickly evolving media landscape.”  – Michael Preston Even before the massive disruptions that have now defined 2020, public media leaders were expressing a growing urgency to address the many and diverse needs of youth audiences, who today have more options at their fingertips than ever before within an overwhelming media…