Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 18, 1993 TAG: 9310160050
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: JAMES ENDRST THE HARTFORD COURANT
DATELINE: NEW YORK LENGTH: Medium
It's an approach the 49-year-old Emmy-winning producer, author and host of the weekly half-hour newsmagazine for kids takes seriously - which is probably why more kids between the ages of 6 and 11 watch "Nick News" (Sundays at 8 p.m. on Nickelodeon) than any network news show.
But, says Ellerbee, "I hate going around saying this show is good for kids because I'm terrified a kid will read that. The last thing in the world you want to hear is `You're about to eat spinach.'"
Now in its second season on cable's Nickelodeon network, the much-awarded "Nick News" - a program endorsed by the National Education Association - will also now be broadcast in syndication.
We sat down recently with Ellerbee, the mother of two grown children, at her Lucky Duck production office in New York's Greenwich Village to talk about kids, grown-ups and television. Here's some of what she had to say.
Q: "Nick News" makes a point of not talking down to kids. How exactly do you do that?
A: Well, it's very simple. You simply treat your audience with the same courtesy with which you'd like to be treated. We cover the behavior of nations - not how crayons are made. I don't think kids are stupid. I don't think they need talking down to. I think they need someone to address them as the sensible-thinking human beings they are.
Q: What age group are you targeting?
A: Well, we aim at age 12. We know that younger kids watch it because they write us letters. We know that grown-ups watch it because they write us letters, too. And we don't mind grown-ups watching if the kid in your house doesn't mind the grown-up watching. But it's not a show for grown-ups.
Q: How do you make your story selections (which cover a broad range of topics from politics and social issues to science, technology, sports and entertainment)?
A: Normal newscasts - grown-up newscasts - tend to raise the anxiety of their viewers every night. Well, we don't do that. It serves no purpose. It's a particularly cruel thing to do with kids. When we show problems we try to show people dealing with problems. We try to show ways that people are getting by, ways that people are making changes, of doing things that make the world a better place without being too goody-two-shoes. We show a very realistic world but we never say, "This is the way the world is kid and there's NOTHING you can do about it."
Q: Can you talk about the "Who's in charge here?" pieces.
A: It's about grown-ups behaving foolishly. The purpose of that segment is a strong message to kids that sometimes you just get older, not smarter.
Q: It seems like you have a "show don't tell" approach.
A: We do. We try to do it by storytelling, by inference. We say, "Here's the story. You look at it and see what you think."
Q: Do you find yourself surprised by kids?
A: Not really. Kids are smart. Sometimes they give me little reality checks, which I think is good.
Q: Such as?
A: Well, I had a conversation with a little girl a few weeks ago and she was saying how her mother was very much against her having a Barbie doll because, she says, "You know Barbie is so skinny and the mothers are afraid that little girls will want to look like Barbie and they'll diet or stick their fingers down their throat to make them throw up in order to look like this and therefore Barbie's bad for us." But she said, "But I don't think so." And I said, really, why not? And this child looked at me as if I had just fallen off a turnip truck. She looked at me and said, "Miss Ellerbee. It's a doll!"
Q: A lot of people think kids have a little too much to say these days. Do kids have too much power?
A: Kids have (too) few legal rights in America, they really do. . . . I don't think we're doing anything bad at all by teaching kids to raise their voices and question things. I think noisy citizens are good citizens, and in a democracy it's the duty of every citizen to keep their mouth open. And you don't start being a citizen when you're 18. You're a citizen when you're born in this country and you have a right to keep your mouth open.
Q: Do you think you were as sharp as kids are when you were a kid?
A: No. And I didn't have to be. It's a different world.
Q: Does that sadden you?
A: Sometimes it does. It would be nice I suppose if we lived in a world where the TV wasn't turned on to CNN and kids didn't walk through the house and hear this stuff and hear bits and pieces of it. So what we try to do then is take it and put it together in a whole context that makes some sense in some healthy way.
by CNB