Dora - The Explorer

Heard about the program "Doravin Payanangal" (Chutti TV - A Tamil Channel for Kids) from one of my colleague who has a daughter doing her kindergarten. She is a fan of Dora and tries hard to watch all the episodes. While switching channels i came across this program , saw the whole one (it requires a lot of patience) out of curiosity to know its nature.

The nature of the program is like this - Dora will have to reach a destination to complete a task . She with the help of a monkey , a map (to show the path) , a bag (to carry the required items) and her brother will reach the destination overcoming a lot of hurdles and complete the task successfully. The most important aspect of the program is , you and i (the audience) will also be helping them in their mission. This aspect of the program is the main reason for its success.

The program tries to remain interactive in all possible ways , putting up enough pauses between a question and its answer , repeating each task to be done a lot more times so that kids will remember and repeat it the next time and asking all the kids in the house to cheer for Dora. If Dora wants , say a pen from her bag , a lot of items will be displayed on the screen , selecting each one of them a question will be asked "Is this a pen?" , and finally when the right one is chosen you will hear this "you (audience - the kids) have chosen the right one for Dora and has helped her in her mission". Like wise the program makes sure that the kids remain engaged in helping Dora complete her mission.

I really liked the program ( by visualizing how a kindergarten child would have enjoyed it) . The creators of the program have taken up the idea of interaction from a computer game and has made a television show from it. The idea is simple and already existing (in some other format) , but the way it has been converted and delivered to the audience has made it a hit. So , whenever you are looking for an idea , don't panic , it is already present some where , only thing is you will have to realize it ( I did not know how to end this post , so added some philosophical talk).