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Inside the Preschool Entertainment Boom, or, How Television Became My Baby's Best Friend
Free Press
May 2008
On Sale: May 6, 2008
256 pages
ISBN: 1416546839
EAN: 9781416546832
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
In this eye-opening book, the first to investigate the
explosion of the multibillion-dollar preschool entertainment
business and its effects on families, Dade Hayes -- an
entertainment expert, author, and concerned father -- lifts
the veil on the closely guarded process of marketing to the
ultra-young and their parents. Like many parents, Dade Hayes grabbed "me time" by plopping
his daughter in front of the TV, relaxing while Margot
delighted in the sights and sounds of Barney and the
Teletubbies. But when Margot got hooked, screaming whenever
the TV was turned off, Hayes set out to explore the vast
universe of this industry in which preschoolers devour $21
billion worth of entertainment. Going behind the scenes to talk with executives, writers,
and marketers who see the value of educational TV, Hayes
finds compelling research that watching TV may raise IQs and
increase vocabularies. On the other side, he brings in the
voices of pediatricians and child psychologists who warn
against "babysitter TV" and ask whether "TV trance" is
healthy -- in spite of the relaxation that the lull affords
exhausted parents -- as recent studies link early television
viewing with obesity, attention and cognitive problems, and
violence. Along the way, Hayes narrates the fascinating evolution of
Nickelodeon's bilingual preschool gamble, Ni Hao, Kai-lan,
from an art student's Internet doodles to its final product:
an educationally fortified, Dora-inflected, test
audience-approved television show. At the show's debut,
jittery experts hold their breath as the tweaked and
researched Kai-lan faces Mr. Potato Head in the battle for a
three-year-old's attention. Anytime Playdate reveals the marketing science of capturing
a toddler's attention, examining whether Baby Einstein and
its ilk will make babies smarter, or if, conversely,
television makes babies passive and uncritical, their
imaginations colonized by marketing schemes before they even
speak. It tells us why the raucous Dora the Explorer has
usurped Blues Clues for preschool primacy, why the Brit hit
In the Night Garden won't follow Teletubbies into American
tot stardom, and why the comparatively quiet and wholesome
Sesame Street has reigned for decades. Hayes vividly
portrays the educators, psychologists, executives, parents,
and, lest we forget, kids who have shaped the history of
children's television, uncovering the tensions between the
many personalities, the creative foment that combines story,
music, and message in this medium to produce today's almost
dizzying array of products and choices. In the end, Hayes gives readers a provocative but balanced
portrait of an age in technological transition, and shows
that what's at stake in the "Rattle Battle" is nothing less
than the character of the next generation.
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