Extreme Parental Guidance - FORMAT
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Synopsis
Are we really bad parents?

Travelling across the country, this format examines what really worries parents of today, asking what they want to know about how to raise their kids, and what they need to know in order to do it better. In each episode, we help two families who are facing challenging problems bringing their children up. Dealing with tots through to teens, relatable yet extreme problems are tackled head-on. In this UK original format, Jo Frost looks at specific cases and carries out mass studies exposing, for example, the effects of violent video games and the fitness levels of children today.

Key Format Points Listening to parents concerns and needs and working together to find a way through Group experiment to get an overall picture of children in today’s society Going beyond ‘the naughty step’. Dealing with problems that face kids from tinies to pre-teens – stories that are relatable but un-missable, extreme versions of the things that all parents worry about One Big Question - Listening to the Mums and Dads Episodes can play out in any order

Definition
SD
Genre
Formats
Subgenre
Parenting
Producer
OUTLINE PRODUCTIONS
Production Year
2009
Press
THE GUARDIAN
10th February 2010 Sam Wollaston
Your daughter won't eat anything but sweets and ice-cream? Time to send for Jo Frost.
Kiran doesn't like food, apart from sweets and ice-cream, that's the problem...By the end of the programme, Kiran is wolfing down the fish pie, and asking for more vegetables. ________________________________________

BROADCAST
4th February 2010 Tony Prince
Director of programming, Wedding TV ...Frost handles the kids well and teaches us what comes naturally to most good parents: communication with the kids, love and kindness, strictness and commonsense. The item that concerned me most wasn’t the study of 10-year-old boys playing aggressive computer games to see how it affected their nature, but the one of 10-year-old Bronwyn, who shaves her legs and plasters herself in a daily two-hour make-up regime. An expedition to a photo touch-up studio helps her appreciate that the media cheats.
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THE MIRROR
9th February 2010 Jane Simon ..Jo meets a four-year-old who will only eat sweets and an 11-year-old who can’t leave the house without full make-up. Both are emotional cases and if seeing a beautiful pre-teen calling herself “stupid, ugly and horrible” doesn’t upset you, witnessing a pushed-to-the-edge mother force-feeding her child will.
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THE TELEGRAPH
9th February 2010 Benji Wilson ... the usual diet of tough love, strict routine and hierarchy did the trick.
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THE TIMES
10TH February 2010 Andrew Billen
Bad mother number one was Sophia, accused of force-feeding four-year-old Kiran. Eating nothing but sweets, she had already been treated in hospital for malnutrition and suffered ten fillings to her teeth. .. Frost’s remedy was to send Kiran to bed hungry until she got the message, which she duly did. Bad mother number two was Emma, whose daughter Bronwyn had a surprising number of body issues for a pretty 11-year-old...a visit to a photographer’s studio where the wonders of touching up were explained by means of a rigorous Photoshopping of ... Frost’s portrait. By the end of the show, just as we had left Kiran tucking into fish pies, Bronwyn had thrown out her make-up bag. ________________________________________

THE TELEGRAPH
10TH FEBRUARY 2010 John Preston ... delinquent child, despairing parents, quick visit from Frost, nuggets of common sense dispensed and finally… happiness restored. According to a statistic at the start, ‘One third of UK parents think they are doing a really bad job’ ... One of the terrible tots shown here was a four-year-old girl who would only eat sweets. Another was a 11 year-old called Bronwyn who hated her appearance so much that she regularly covered herself in hair removal cream... But the real cracker was an item about the effect of violent computer games on children. A doctor conducted an experiment in which various 12-year-old boys who played violent games were contrasted with those who didn’t. The most telling part came when he invited each of the boys in for a chat, then deliberately knocked over a jar of pencils on his desk. Only 40 per cent of the violent game players offered to help pick them up, whereas 80 per cent of the non-violent gamers did. Conclusion: violent games are desensitising children to the point where they are losing the ability to empathise with, and help, other people.
Ratings

Jo Frost: Extreme Parental Guidance aired in the
UK on Channel 4 on a weekly basis at 8pm on a
Tuesday.

The show consistently achieved impressive ratings, showing an average of 3.59% TVR, 2.04 million viewers and an 8.11% market share. This shows a clear increase on the average viewing figures for the slot which stand well under 2 million.

The series continuously outperformed the lead-in
series and saw an average increase of 5.12%
market share and an impressive 1.3 million rise in
viewing figures from the previous slot.