Before 1972 there was no such thing as a children's news programme.
You might have watched Nationwide on BBC1 with your family or, if you were allowed to stay up late, ITV News at Ten. The grown-up language and sometimes complicated issues, even simplified for news, felt alienating for young children.
In 1972, a 31-year-old journalist from Leeds, called John Craven, stepped in to edit and present a TV programme designed to keep kids abreast of the top stories of the day. On April 4 that year, the first edition of John Craven's Newsround aired in the afternoon... and it's still going today.
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From his childhood days in Leeds to his Newsround and Countryfile fame, this is John's story.
John Raymond Craven was born on Grimthorpe Street, Headingley, in August 1940 to parents Willie and Marie (neé Noble) Craven. When John was two months old, Willie, who managed a grocery shop on Kirkstall Road, enlisted in the Army as a motor mechanic.
Willie served in Singapore but was captured when it fell to the Japanese. He spent three-and-a-half years of hell in sickeningly brutal Japanese PoW camps and slaving on the infamous Death Railway from Thailand to Burma. When Willie was reunited with John and Marie at Leeds Station, his father was so weak he could barely carry his five-year-old son the short distance from the platform to the taxi rank.
As a child John, who attended Leeds Modern School, would make a bit of money delivering papers for a newsagent around the corner on Ash Road. He'd also collect cushions at Headingley Cricket Ground and return them to the ticket office for pennies.
John left school at 16 and started his first writing job for the company magazine of the Yorkshire Copperworks, Stourton. He then became a junior reporter for the Harrogate Advertiser before moving to the Yorkshire Post as a freelance correspondent.
His TV presenting career began at BBC Newcastle before he moved on to the regional news programme Points West in Bristol. His children's TV career began on a kids' talk show called Search before he was offered a six-week trial run of a TV news programme for children.
Apparently, Jonathan Dimbleby had been first offered the gig but he'd already secured a job on ITV's This Week. Thus John Craven's Newsround was born. "Keep it short, simple and interesting" was John's mantra, enabling children to understand UK and world news which had hitherto been inaccessible.
Do you remember watching John on TV? Let us know in the comments below.
John, 81, said: "They [TV executives] decided to create a news bulletin for children as research showed that children hated the news. They were tired of being told by their parents to be quiet when the news [was] on which built up a huge resistance to it. Our job was to try and break down that resistance in these six weeks."
Rather than leave the programme scraps from the BBC's other news output, Newsround enjoyed the BBC's full journalistic resources. It was the launchpad for Channel 4 News's lead presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy, BBC entertainment correspondent Lizo Mzimba and many more.
The programme never shied away from upsetting news, although it treated tough subjects such as bullying, mental health and racism appropriately for its primary school audience. Newsround, which celebrated its 50th anniversary on Monday, is today watched by an estimated 2m children at least once a week.
John, who presented 3,000 episodes of Newsround, said: "Newsround’s importance today is greater than ever. In the early days, there were only three television channels. There were no mobile phones or internet. Children just got their information from television. We felt it was important that they received information and the truth in a way that they will understand.
"This is even more important today because there are so many outlets that children can hook into to get information. And often that is false news, or it's wrong information. And at least when they're watching Newsround, the teachers, or their parents, or whoever is there with them knows that they're getting the truth.
"It's so important that they have a programme which they feel is theirs, which is directed at them, and which tells them the truth."
John remained on the programme as its principal presenter until 1989 when he left for Countryfile, which he still presents today. The father-of-two, who today lives in Oxfordshire, also presented other programmes including the game show Beat the Brain.
In 2000, John was awarded an OBE for his services to rural and children's broadcasting. In November 2011, he received a special award for Newsround from the British Academy Children's Awards.
John released his autobiography From Headlines to Hedgerows in 2019.
