Here is a short item broadcast last Thursday on Newsround, 5.25pm on CBBC1

(Film of two red pandas kissing, kissing and kissing some more)
Ellie: "These bear friends just can't get enough of each other. The two red pandas have lived together in the same cage at a zoo in Tokyo for 8 years but the romance clearly isn't dead. According to keepers they're smoochier than ever. Ahh!"

Nice to see a Newsround report like this, but without the usual heteronormative slant.

I mentioned in my blog dated 1 October 2007 that Newsround has become a more diverse-friendly and less London-centric programme.

In a speech to the Royal Television Society on 1 November 2007, Head of the BBC Trust, Sir Michael Lyons, argues the need for a more diverse-friendly BBC:

All of my previous work, and especially the inquiry I led into the role and funding of local government, as well as my long association with urban regeneration, has convinced me that diversity both within and between local communities is a source of strength rather than weakness – and that the UK will become stronger the more it recognises and builds on that diversity. The BBC can and should help with this. ...

I have spent much time in my first six months going around the country listening to different audiences and one of the issues constantly raised is that people want to see their lives reflected in BBC output – they want to be represented. And many people don't think the BBC does a good enough job of this. ...

Audiences are telling us that the BBC is still too London-centric – and that has to change. The BBC has to deliver value to all its licence fee payers, wherever they live. ...

For the BBC to discharge its public purposes, to realise its own potential and to respond to this big challenge I have outlined tonight, it must reach all parts of the population, whatever their age, wherever they live, whatever their ethnic background, whatever they are interested in. ...

On behalf of the Trust – and more importantly on behalf of the people who own and pay for the BBC – I have outlined some very high expectations of the BBC. I have no doubt that the BBC has the creativity, the talent and the commitment to make the changes necessary to fulfil them.