From the earliest days of Mr. Dressup and Polka Dot Door to the controversy over Power Rangers, the Alliance for Children and Television has been an outspoken presence on the children’s television scene. While advocating high-quality programming and helping parents make decisions about what their kids watch, act, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, has also played a significant role in supporting and championing the producers who make Canadian kids tv.

‘For 25 years, act has been acting as an energizer, making sure that producers have the resources they need to produce high-quality programming for children…and making sure that the parents have the tools and the support that they need to learn how to help their kids get the best possible experience out of television,’ says Kealy Wilkinson, national director of act.

As part of the 25-year celebration, act, once known as the Children’s Broadcast Institute, has been looking back at Canadian children’s programming throughout the years. ‘It’s really interesting to see how much effort is being put into the crafting of programming by Canadian producers. It is really quite stunning,’ says Wilkinson.

‘When you look back and you see these programs in perspective as samples of their time, it is truly like stepping back in a time machine,’ says Wilkinson. ‘It’s amazing to see how children lived their lives even 30 years ago. Television was a huge part of their lives then and it’s a huge part of it still.’

act not only promotes quality children’s television, it rewards it, with its annual Awards of Excellence ceremony, to be held this year Nov. 20 at the Glenn Gould Theatre.

The Awards of Excellence are complemented by the two-day Children’s Television Conference, one of the ways in which act offers support to the kids television industry.

Produced in association with the tvontario Children’s Programming Fund, the conference offers a number of professional development sessions featuring prominent Canadian writers and producers discussing their techniques and insights in making quality children’s programming.

The first session each day is called ‘The Construct of the Story,’ and writers Brian Doyle (Friday) and Karleen Bradford (Saturday) will discuss the methods of reaching children through good storytelling, as well as the how-tos of successfully translating a story to television.

The mid-morning session will be ‘The Importance of Story in Child Development,’ with educators Bob Barton (Friday) and Kathy Lundy (Saturday), discussing, among other things, how children at various stages relate to the world and how a writer can connect with target age groups and each gender.

The afternoon session for Friday, entitled ‘Producers: Personal Experiences,’ will be moderated by Lisa Olfman of Portfolio Entertainment. Panelists David Devine (Devine Entertainment), Gerri Cook (Dinosaur Soup Productions) and John Finkelstein (Motion International) will discuss how they find and develop project ideas, choose writers and approach a story.

On Saturday, Radical Sheep’s Rob Mills will moderate ‘Screenwriter: From Story to Script.’ Indelible Ink’s Jed MacKay and freelance tv writers Ben Joseph and Kate Barris will be on the panel to talk about finding ideas, deciding which stories will work for television and the unique aspects of writing for children’s – as opposed to adult – television.

The alternative to the panel discussions is the two-day Storytime Workshop, where emerging producers can bring their ideas, further develop their work and pitch it to industry bigwigs. The Storytime Workshop is presented in association with the Canadian Screen Training Centre.

Wilkinson says the workshops and sessions are an important tool for both new and established children’s programming producers to learn about their audience, noting that producers of kids tv seem to know less than they used to about the little people they are programming for.

‘A lot of people are moving into children’s production now from different areas,’ says Wilkinson. ‘It used to be that people who produced for [kids] television usually came from backgrounds that were either education related or they were child psychologists. Now, most of the people who move into children’s television production, because it’s big business, are experts in production and experts in marketing, but they may not be as knowledgeable about children as they would have been in another generation.’

According to Wilkinson, programming standards have to be kept consistently high in both production value and the writing quality, because children develop a critical eye much earlier than they used to.

‘I think [kids] have become more discerning viewers because they have so much available to them,’ says Wilkinson. ‘They learn quite young just to absorb standards of good production, so they will tell you right off if something is cheesy.’

She attributes this development in large part to the increasing number of parents who take an interest in what their kids are watching. ‘More than 80% of Canadian parents actively intervene in their children’s viewing in some way,’ says Wilkinson, ‘either by helping them pick the shows, watching with them, setting limits in terms of hours and deciding what is or isn’t appropriate at any given age group. Because the parents are so involved and they talk to their kids a lot about what they are watching, I think children themselves are able to develop critical skills at a much earlier age.’