“Any new series must get the thumbs-up from a toy company before it’s even shown to TV commissioners,” laments one animator. “Many great scripts get dropped because they lack the merchandise potential.”Consequently, Carlton is now on board with a computer-generated remake of Captain Scarlet, is developing a new Thunderbirds series for 2005 and – on the back of the big screen success of Spy Kids – is also being courted by two major US animation studios about a new Joe 90 series.With the focus now on global brand management and toy sales, rather than television production fees, it’s now worthwhile for these erstwhile television companies to give their programmes to channels in order to reap the in-store harvest. “Some US channels like PBS now expect to get their kids animation for free and want up to 5 per cent of our merchandise revenues as well,” says Dilnott-Cooper. “They have finally realised the importance of their airtime as a shop window for our products.”THE CHILDREN’S FAVOURITES MAKING A RETURNSuperTed (1982-86, S4C)UK and LA animators are busy raising £7m to get SuperTed off the ground again.

This time the show is aimed at the five-year-old market: eight-year-olds are now too old for teddy bears.Muffin the Mule (1946, BBC, below)The Watch with Mother star Muffin is trading in his piano to become the “moral guardian” of a c?ie of animals living in a city farm. The first-ever kids’-TV character returns to BBC1 and to CBeebies in 2005.Captain Scarlet (1968, ITV)£15m of private finance is bringing the indestructible Spectrum agent back to life. The puppet master Gerry Anderson has coined the term “hypermarionation” to describe the computer-generated technique behind the new show, which is launching late in 2005.Postman Pat (1981, BBC1)The children’s-media outfit Entertainment Rights paid £5m for the rights to Postman Pat, who will be resuming deliveries on CBeebies next autumn. A spin-off series centring on Pat’s feline friend, Jess, is also in the pipeline for 2005.Thunderbirds (1965-66, ITV)With finance from broadcasters in the UK, the US and Japan, Carlton is about to start production on another 26 half-hour shows, on the back of the upcoming live-action film The series launches early in 2005.. London’s evening paper, the Evening Standard, will lose more than £10m this year, analysts said, as the newspaper’s publisher revealed that recruitment advertising revenues had plunged by 11 per cent.

This was driven by an 11 per cent deterioration in recruitment ad sales, as a result of the sharp slowdown in the City jobs market. Analysts said this means that the Standard would make a loss of more than £10m this year, as the paper is dependent on the state of the London jobs market.. Broadcasters are being pressed to issue more warnings to parents on the content of news reports because new evidence shows children are scared more by real-life violence than fiction. The research was funded by the BBC, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC), Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC) and Independent Television Commission (ITC).Steve Perkins, from the ITC, said there were instances in the news and in other programmes, such as soaps, where there was a clear need for more warnings. “The more signposting and flagging to parents and children broadcasters give, the better,” he said.The danger of scaring children was particularly pressing because they did not even need to see violence to be frightened. The research found youngsters of this age had a much greater “moral imagination” than their parents of the consequences of an action.”The thing we were surprised about was that they didn’t need to see violence [to be frightened of it],” Andrea Millwood Hargrave, the research director, said.Stephen Whittle, the BBC’s controller of editorial policy, said there was no way of having a system on television similar to the BBFC’s ratings for movies.