Live online chat with Creative Director of CBeebies, Michael Carrington, 1-2pm Wed Jan 30th

[CarrieMumsnet]

Micheal Carrington, creative director of CBeebies will be coming to chat live next weds, Jan 30th from 1-2pm. In his previous job, he brought, amongst other programmes Lunar Jim and Charlie and Lola to the BBC, and he's now editorially responsible for the CBeebies digital channel as well as for all CBeebies output on BBC ONE and BBC TWO; and for bbc.co.uk/cbeebies.

So if you've got a burning question about the future of Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy, or want to start a campaign to bring back Chigley, please join us at 1pm next weds (that was Watch with Mother time in my day ).

If you can't make it on the day, you can of course post your questions in advance here.

Tracy BEaker is dreadful - both my older dds (8 and 5) loathe it

they love Mortified though!

I have to say that despite my comments I love love love CBeebies and would much rather DD watch that than most other things. I think there's a lot of educational programmes on there and I hope that trend continues.

My Ds is 2 and occasionally watches Wombles, Rainbow, Mr Benn etc on (whispers) another childrens' tv channel. He adores them amd last night was asking for more wombles

how things are made...proper cookery...so like a younger Blue Peter type progrmame - like Play School was maybe?

hey, I said about things being made not Cod [harrumph]

Dear boabsmum - I appreciate your view on repeats and I assume you are specifically referring to Monster Cafe and the other couple of vintage shows we repeated late last year. We were actually trying to appeal to an older audience on the weekends. Those shows were very popular in their day - regularly in the top 10 for children aged 5-7 years. Indeed they still have appeal for the older children, but what I hadn't fathomed was that parents left their younger children in front of the tele without supervision, so they were seeing those shows not for them. We've stopped doing that now and will only repeat programmes that are specifically made by CBeebies.

Also he's picked up a lot of sign language from Something Special and loves to show off using it even though he isn't hearing impaired. Programmes with educational & developmental themes are terrific on Cbeebies

LOVE the manufatureing bit of big cook too.

mayeb some Man ENg firm will sponsor it

"big cook little cook sponsored by.."

Could Cbeebies in their genius create an amalgamation of the Wiggles/Singing Kettle type song and dance show (not Boogie Beebies-esque)? That would be a great reason to put the Tweenies out pasture surely? I don't know many children, certainly not my two, who like the Tweenies.

But ITNG is fab and I suspect will be the Clangers of it's generation

"but what I hadn't fathomed was that parents left their younger children in front of the tele without supervision,"

MIchael, do you have children of your own?

it isn't called The Electronic Babysitter for nothing, you know

I remember a Playschool which showed trombones being made

Is Carol Chell still on the scene? She was very enthusiastic.

"what I hadn't fathomed was that parents left their younger children in front of the tele without supervision, so they were seeing those shows not for them."

and you are a director of a tv channel

Hi my2weegirls - we have swung the pendulum in favour of boys over the last 18 months. That is becasue we were losing them to Boomerang and Nick Jnr and Jetix. After extensive research we discovered there was a big gap in our content for boys. So we have brought new shows to the schedule like Tommy Zoom and Lunar Jim and Numberjacks which are skewed to boys. Now the gender mix is almost 50/50 again... so we can start to relax a bit and I am looking for new material for girls.

I always wondered what was the thinking behind that song-catcher programme... it was dreadful and so dated!! it had the yummy posh bloke from TikkaBilla in it when he was a wee boy

thank god

both my older girls think cbeebies is for boys

Thanks for the answer - there are vintage good and vintage baaaad - my son (5) particularly liked the old school programmes like Watch (Songcatcher) and Melvyn and Maureen, but Monster Cafe was poor and just erring too far on the scary side for my liking.

i think that the camp presenter... (who is he? i cnat rememebr his name) the bloke, is fantastic at what he does
ditto saint Justin of makaton.

they shoudl be really proud of themsleves.

Dear sheikyerbouti - Mister Maker is certainly very popular. It's an Indie commission from The Foundation - the makers of Basil Brush. We're not involved in the commercial exploitation of our shows, so you would need to check with them. Justin is fantastic!

the camp one is on Jungle run on Itv with a much more STREET accent

tis hilarious

Justin is so comepltely fabulous

there is some real shite on cbeebes - but also some good stuff.

adn CHRIS
thast his name- he of the groomed eyebrows
they are so so good and so fab at not looking sheepish

i think they have relaly foudn their metier.

I'd love to be a cbeebeis presenter

i am VERY good at looking interested

are sue and sid still an alliterative item?

who is Sue?

Dear captaincod - I'm disappointed that your ds 4,10 is not watching CBeebies anymore because we've worked hard to attract young boys back to the channel. However, he is developing his own tastes and it is perfectly natural for him to go off and sample other channels and content.

Children some times come back to us - so I have my fingers crossed!