Head of BBC television’s children’s programmes who created Newsround and made a great contribution to Blue Peter
Edward Barnes’s greatest innovation as head of BBC television children’s programmes from 1978 until 1986 lay in creating Newsround. He launched the news programme for young viewers in 1972, after discovering that only 0.7% of his target age group watched TV news: “It was a man in a suit, talking, and it was boring,” he said.
He put John Craven, dressed casually in a sweater, in the presenter’s chair, initially for a six-week experiment, and the programme went on to become a BBC institution, even breaking major international news stories such as the disintegration of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.