Little Sponges

At the Kidscreen Summit in New York today, I attended a great presentation on media development for preschoolers by Stacey Matthias from Insight Research Group. Talking about preschoolers, she accurately pointed out that "For little sponges, all media is educational."

As gatekeepers, parents control the preschool content watched by their kids, and there are three ways they do it:

1. PROHIBIT inappropriate content
2. PERMIT entertainment (to keep their attention)
3. PROMOTE education + entertainment

For success in preschool programming, PROMOTING education + entertainment is key. While a lot of this seems obvious to those of us who work in the industry, Stacey did a great job of distilling and presenting it. I'm looking forward to the remainder of the conference over the next couple of days.