In the 1990s, children and youth broadcasting has undergone enormous changes: soap operas and news programmes are now a daily part of children's viewing, cartoons (some would say) occupy an undue share of air time, and children themselves are today more media-literate than ever before - perhaps not the "passive audience" they have so often been seen as.
The University of Manchester International Broadcasting Symposium has long been a meeting place for broadcasters and professional educators. This text contains edited sessions from the 29th Symposium, which took place in 1998. The papers cover such topics as new media, music broadcasting, images of children and young people, and cultural diversity in youth broadcasting; they feature papers and discussion from David Elstein, Brian Cosgrove, Anthony Wilson, and Malcolm Gerri.