Award-Winning Public Television Series
Parent Sense

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The Challenge

Producing and distributing original programs for public television presents a number of challenges, from funding production to distributing the show to markets across the country. In producing Parent Sense, a program providing information on raising healthy families, Mind & Media faced two additional hurdles: working within an extremely short production schedule and working with children and parents, often in tense situations.

The Solution

Mind & Media partnered with the Dr. Spock Company to produce a series of eight half-hour, magazine-style episodes in just three months. To meet the demands of a three-month schedule, we expanded our video team by drawing on the production expertise of people from other departments. They quickly turned into camera operators, directors, and producers, making it possible for Mind & Media to field multiple video teams across the country simultaneously. We:

• Interviewed experts and wrote stories on topics of interest to all parents, such as childhood aggression, immunizations, and talking to teens about sex
• Shot on-camera interviews with parents, children, and medical experts offering different viewpoints and experiences
• Packaged interviews, footage, and computer graphics into engaging, informative shows highlighting crucial information
• Distributed the television series to the nation’s public television market

The Results

All eight episodes of Parent Sense aired on public television stations in over 90 percent of the nation’s markets (including the top five markets), and the series earned two prestigious industry awards for its high-quality information and production values.