Abstract
"The disappearance of children's television" and its significance for media policy was recently described by Gert K. Müntefering, the inventor of Die Sendung mit der Maus.1 Even if children's television threatens to move out of the focus of programme providers, research and public discourse, there are offerings in television programming that are worth preserving because they succeed. What does the rather everyday term "succeed" mean in the context of everyday television programming, its everyday use and in the context of an empirical television programme analysis? The success of the programme offer can be understood in a media-pedagogical and empirical approach via two components: On the one hand, it is the quantitative use of the programme by the children watching it that makes it a 'hit' or a 'flop'. On the other hand, success is defined by the possible relevance of the programme's content and structures for children's socialisation. From the point of view of media education, the question of where the programme providers succeed becomes the question of where the programme successfully provides children with structures and content that children use to organise and shape their everyday lives and that are helpful to them in constructing their lifeworld and developing their personality. These are, for example, offers that support children in understanding the world, in locating themselves socially, in processing impressions and demands, wishes, needs, hopes, fears and issues, and in orienting themselves.
