Idea for new parenting advice TV show based on Mumsnet Talk - your thoughts/input needed

[JustineMumsnet]

You may have clocked a wee announcement last week that Channel 4 are interested in making a TV show featuring real mums sharing their best support and advice to others in need of it, a sort of TV version of Mumsnet Talk. We have been approached by the production company - Studio Lambert - to work together to come up with a pilot for the show.

If it's commissioned it's likely to be 6-8 programmes of 1 hour length (48 mins without the ads). The (very rough) idea is to have 4 or so featured families per show, each with a specific parenting problem and a range of mums who've been there and done that or just have some insight, giving their help, support and advice in an attempt to help them through the problem, a la Mumsnet.

We're at a very early stage but we wanted to ask for any thoughts about format, participation, whether/how you'd like to be approached - a panel, a sticky thread? - what you think the pitfalls are, what the opportunities are, what subject matter you'd like to see covered and indeed anything else that springs to mind on the subject.

Many thanks in advance for your input.

Another one who thinks a radio show would be better. I love MN's anonymity & the, shall we say, 'bracing' views you get on here. I wonder how much of that would pass pre-watershed guidelines? And I don't think a sanitised MN is something I'd want to watch. Not even if Myklene Ass was fronting it

And please don't go Loose Women on us. That show's just a televised coven.

Could call it Woman Sour

I like it, Zillah

I like the idea that a group of mums chat and talk about a problem they're having with their kids and the different ways they handle it. (Can't remember who suggested it here first).

I don't like the idea of having a panel of do gooder experts who preach about how fantastic they are themselves. Would be a real turn off.

Well I think it's a great idea. Agree with others that have said make it chronological but I wouldn't start with pregnancy - there is so much about pregnancy and childbirth already.

Much more fun would be 'how to be a mum without looking like a bum' (ie mummy stylee and how to get dressed before your child turns one using cbeebies and subterfuge)

'How to deal with other parents' (school yard fights are not just for children and how not to kill your mother in law)

Navigating through hormone hell (how to deal with stroppy teenagers while you are going through the hot sweats of menopause and attempting to maintain some decorum while kicking the cat in anger).

Engineering for amateurs (how to put together Playmobil without teaching your children interesting new words and IKEA for beginners)

When you're in love with a beautiful mummy (managing to maintain adult relationships with small children clinging to each leg).

etc.

great idea!

now, how the bloody hell to make it work?

i imagine 'grumpy old man' style vox pops on ishoos from fave MNers. I suspect some of us are more photogenic than others...

thing is, who is going to go on telly and admit they lost a tampon/ detest their MIL/ are displeased with their DPs endowment/ had commited a perfidious act of bad parenting/ had started drinking at 11am ??

twould make christmas with the family rather awkward wouldn't it?

Oh I dunno, I've done some cracking parenting faux pas (not realising DS had swallowed a pound coin till it turned up in his nappy would be one that comes to mind) which I wouldn't mind recounting.

Yes good idea, and do offer me a job as a tv presenter, I need even MORE excuses reasons to get my sorry behind back to London, pronto.

Sod Quint - pick me - I actually have TV experience and managed not to libel anyone last time!

I like the idea of it being in the style of 'Grumpy Old Women'

Could call it 'Mums the word' and have a group of women of different ages and from different walks of life etc making their views known on variety of topics.

Im sure by now we all have become familiar with the user names that -

you tend to agree with
irritate you beyond belief
only post to boast
are really funny

As time went on with the programme you would start to recognise which Mums you had most in common with etc and think it would be a great way of getting across the whole FFS- with raised eyebrows obviously!!

It should be post 9pm, no kids around. Although I hate loose women maybe that general idea would work. Perhaps taking threads and discussing them as well as a theme for that night? Allowing members to post alongside the programme might make it more 'MN real'? Asking members to post on a specific thing (ie pregnancy/birth whatever) on a specific thread for the show?
It could be really funny and informative (like MN) or complete shite (I don't like any of the pegnancy/baby/kid programmes nor any daytime stuff)

But please, no Boden.

so long as it isnt common like loose women,or argy bargy like wife swap
be mindful of protecting your brand or else mn will be synonymity wth trashy telly

I'd like to see something fictional, along the lines of Desperate Housewives, but not as silly. Witty and edgy.

Or it could be a horror film of the stalker variety. Or Attack of the zombie mummies, where everyone who's up in the wee small hours with insomniac babies, gets together and hacks into government computers or goes round to the houses of unfaithful husbands and kills them, ripping our their intestines and hanging them from the drainpipes. That sort of thing.

Or - keeping with the magazine programme type idea, we could look at how people from different cultures and countries deal with similar problems. It could be modelled on the radio 4 programmes, 'Crossing Continents', or 'From our own correspondent' or even 'Saturday Live'.

But the ideas already posted on here are good. Loose women? TV Woman's Hour? (Or Parents' Hour would be better, imo.' Actually, my head is exploding with ideas - need to go and lie down.

Penguins - where we all gang up on some loverat and send them a fake text to say we'll meet them by the penguins, and then someone takes a photo, and someone else tells him he's been outed. That sort of thing. On a thread from ages ago.

But I am very very Pwetty.

Format;

A panel of Mums (and Dads?) which changes every two weeks....a selection of guests with issues they would like to discuss. The guests can ask the panel for practical advice on whatever they need help with and then the panel each take a turn in describing their thoughts and debating on the issues at hand. The Mum or Dad who is asking or help can then choose a direction to go with..

Once a week there can be a "case study" which is where we see the ideas from last week put into action....controlled crying for instance...or unconditional parenting...and the panel or presenter can speak to the parent who received the advice and see how it worked for them.

All interspersed with comedy sketches on parenting. We like comedy.

And please come to me for example sketches. I have been commissioned a number of times by BBC Radio 4 comedy you know!

[self promotion emoticon]

think basic idea is great.there needs to be ALOT more realistic empowering advice out there and if done well this could help esp. new mums-to-be.

mums selected should be wide ranging experientially,socially and morally; maybe mumsnetters could vote on which mums are chosen for the 'panel' and yes the loose women idea would work well; more natural

eg. 1.eco/bf/cosleeping /attatchment mum; 2./bottle feed only /gina ford/maternity-leave working mum; 3.working mum-with-nanny and all the trappings!money,4 wheel drive maybe a celeb -posh spice !as shes up the duff again! 4. single mum on benefits or maybe someone with a disability a despite-all-odds muml also a large family and small family.

overall the message need to be there's no 'fixed' way and mums need to trust themselves; but there's a huge variety of ways to bring up and educate kids..here's some examples ( not answers )

think the post above mine good idea; comedy keeps it fun, light,interesting ; maybe use clips from popular shows like 'my family' to illustrate points;

a set topic each week good idea too as in needs to be kept simple; maybe each family has the same shared problem each week and then we get to see how it works out after theyeach trythier chosen different methods out.

viewers can also feedback on line maybe a special mumsnet page on here so live feedback online available during and after the show.

I've been trying to avoid this for ages, but the sticky won't go away and so I can't resist replying.

I've spent some time in the living hell that is developing new programme ideas, and this has all the hallmarks of the kind of idea which everyone thinks sounds great because MN is so popular and it is bound to do really well and so on and so forth, and which almost always turns out to be a real turkey. Mainly because people get so excited about the connection (MN in this case, could be a celebrity presenter, oh lets do something with that Geldof girl because every teenager wants to be her...) and doesn't actually think about the programme until it's way too far down the line.

A parenting advice programme is, realistically, only going to be of interest to a very small segment of the population at any one time. Does your child have eating problems? That's probably one in a hundred of the possible audience. And some of them will be out or watching Eastenders. So, you need something more to make people watch it.

There are several options for this kind of programme:

One is a decent format - i.e. a way of creating cliffhangers which actually keep you watching to the end because you care about the people and want to know what happens in the end.

Another is compelling on-screen presenters - no one really watched How Clean Is Your House for the cleaning tips after about week two, it was all about the presenters, along with reason three which is...

The other is the delight in feeling better about yourself, one way or another. How Clean works because you feel that at least you don't live in a slum and there is a voyeuristic fascination in seeing people who do. In a slightly different way, Motorway Cops does so well because there is a huge satisfaction to be had from seeing those smug aggressive drivers you meet on the roads actually being pulled over and done for it.

As things stand, I can't see that the MN tv proposal has any of these things going for it.

And it's hard to imagine how the MN experience (!) could or would translate into tv. Or indeed why it should, really. I remember sitting in a tv office when texting was The Next Big Thing, next to a load of people working out how to get texts into a show. There were several attempts, they all bombed. Just because it's cool, it doesn't automatically make good tv.

Finally, I also really wonder whether a show like this can fit in with the MN ethos. It is very, very rare for contributors to a tv show like this not to be exploited, or exaggerated, or at very least produced to look worse than they are. Or to get a reward from the show which adequately repays their contribution. So should MN really be doing all of this to its contributors/members?

You know you could preserve anonymity by using animated mummies (and daddies natch.) to voice opinions from threads you sticky here and we wade into. For example, you could start one on my biggest mistake (so far) as a parent and present it as a multiformat (presenter introduces subject) then talking head mummy puppets. (Or did I just eat too much at lunchtime and trip out my blood sugar? )

Oh god.

This has reminded me of a programme I was on about 12 years ago - Briging Up Baby - think it was hosted by Denise Waterman, wife of Pete. It was an Anglia TV 'magazine' show - exactly this kind of idea.

Each week there would be a particular theme - perhaps speech delay or mixed feeding or sleep - Linda Blair (not that one) was the resident 'expert' and there would be two or three mums on the sofa, kids playing at their feet, talking about the 'ishoo' of the week.

Then they would have an OB also - a day out on the train with your toddler for eg, also a cooking segment and I seem to remember Michael Rosen had a spot for storytime?

It was terribly BRIGHT and PRIMARY and DAYTIME TV.

Even though us mums who were on it were terribly witty and educated and sane (honest!) it still came across as sound-bitey daytime TV fodder.

What a hoot!

I could see it, maybe, in an 'After Dark' format - anyone remember it?
But it's the anonymity that allows people to say what they really think and I can't see how you could keep that.

AS long as i can be the one in a kaftan smoking a cheroot whilst swinging slightl off screen in one of these then verity thing can call my agent ;)

I will give my usual potty training nonchalant advice and look all sneery.