Tinky-Winky, Laa-Laa, Dipsy and Po pose for a photograph because the Teletubbies have fun their twenty fifth anniversary with the Lighting of the Iconic Empire State Constructing on April 26, 2022 in Recent York City.
John Lamparski | Getty Images Entertainment | Getty Images
“Tinky Winky. Dipsy. Laa-Laa. Po!”
Those 4 names, the long-lasting sing-song intro to the “The Teletubbies,” have graced household TVs for nearly 30 years. While the library of episodes hasn’t modified in many years, their role in American media has taken on recent meaning within the age of streaming.
“Back within the day TV was a little bit simpler,” said Dean Koocher a television expert, who spent years bringing international kids shows, including “Teletubbies” and “The Wiggles,” to the Americas.
“Back then there have been less gatekeepers, you recognize, there was PBS, Disney and Nickelodeon was sort of an upstart coming up,” Koocher told CNBC. “The great thing was, in case you ever could get their eyeballs, you had a much greater piece of the market, because there weren’t that many selections for kids.”
Now, shows aren’t just on traditional TV and there are way more places for folks and kids to find content. From YouTube and TikTok to dozens of streaming options, audiences don’t need to wait to watch their favorite shows. Saturday morning cartoons at the moment are everyday-anytime cartoons.
And that is good for streamers, too, especially as Wall Street profitability pressures mount.
Kids represent a novel demographic for the entertainment industry. Age-specific promoting laws mean firms cannot market directly to them in lots of cases, but their viewing habits — often favoring repetition of content — makes them exceptionally loyal consumers.
At a time when streaming services are eager to lure in recent subscribers and reduce churn, having a hub for family-friendly content is a technique to ensure paying members (i.e. parents) stick around.
“Kids and family-friendly content is critically vital to each streaming acquisition and retention,” said Peter Csathy, founder and chair of advisory firm Creative Media. “Franchise family-friendly brands are welcomed by exhausted parents on the lookout for some down time as their kids get their screen time.
“Once those kids are hooked on a show, they never leave and won’t let their parents even consider leaving,” he added.
That is vitally vital for streaming services, especially as consumers grow more cost-conscious and weigh which services to keep month after month and which services to ditch before the subsequent billing cycle.
In recent times, legacy media firms — like Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Universal and Paramount — have scrambled to compete with Netflix within the streaming realm. For some time, Wall Street was satisfied with high subscriber growth and the promise of profitability in the longer term. Nonetheless, as ad revenue from linear TV continued to decline significantly, investors quickly reversed course, demanding more immediate earnings growth.
Rinse, repeat
The unique thing about kids content is that streamers don’t need a variety of it to keep kids occupied, said Koocher, who now runs Kidstream, a streaming service focused on providing kids aged 2 to 9 with appropriate, enriching content.
“Young kids don’t mind repetition,” he said, noting that while adults will watch a recent season of a show after which largely move on to one other, kids aren’t opposed to repeat viewings in a brief span of time.
“Kids are notoriously obsessive about the franchise movies, shows and characters they love, and can watch them time and again and another time,” Csathy echoed.
This implies streamers don’t need to license or create as much content to keep these viewers coming back every month.
Currently, adult-only original entertainment on streaming services outnumbers TV-G or TV-PG rated content by nearly 270%, according to a study from the Parents Television and Media Council published in October.
“Seeing that lower than 15% of titles on the main streamers is reportedly family-friendly, seems to me that the majority major streamers don’t fully embrace this reality,” said Csathy. “Franchise content is something that may be smart to prioritize. Very smart.”
A variety of major streaming services have kid-centric sections of their platforms for his or her proprietary kids TV productions, but many have also looked outside of Hollywood to license content from international production firms for U.S. audiences.
“A toddler within the U.K. or a toddler in France or a toddler in Australia or the U.S. have similar wants and wishes at that young age,” said Koocher. It’s only as they mature that their taste in content begins to differ.
That is why shows like “Bluey,” an Australian production, “Peppa Pig,” a British production, “Masha and the Bear,” a Russian production and “Miraculous: Tales of Lady Bug and Cat Noir,” a French production, have managed to perform well of their native countries in addition to in America.
Girl watches “Peppa Pig” on iPad tablet laying within the sofa at home.
Artur Debat | Moment Mobile | Getty Images
Meanwhile, Koocher has found that kids today are still desirous about old classics like “Barney,” “Thomas the Tank Engine,” “Madeline” and “Wallace and Gromit,” all of which can be found on Kidstream.
Koocher’s platform, which costs $4.99 a month, is also home to newer programming like “Dot” from Randi Zuckerberg, sister of Meta founder Mark Zuckerberg; the animated problem-solving duo of “Bitz & Bob;” and the live-action animal show “Gudrun: The Viking Princess.”
The longer term of kids content
Amid a desire from parents for more content and academic options, there’s a possibility for artificial intelligence to help speed up the animation process.
AI not only has the potential to hasten the animation process, nevertheless it also democratizes entry into the animation space.
“Generative AI will enable the streamers to generate recent kid programming much faster and cheaper, which they absolutely will do,” Csathy said. “Originality and quality is sure to suffer, however the streamers will bank on the hope that kids won’t notice.”
For Kidstream, the main target stays on quality over quantity, Koocher said.
“We’re motivated by the parent or the caregiver, whoever’s buying the services, just to be completely satisfied,” he said.
The platform, which has been around since 2017, has greater than 25,000 subscribers, a fraction of the main streaming platforms. But the corporate can get away with fewer viewers partially since it doesn’t need to spend exponentially on recent content.
Koocher, who has three many years of experience within the kids TV space, has seen the transition away from linear programming and says that audiences don’t need to return to a time-based schedule so as to watch their favorite programs, apart from sports.
“I can see more area of interest channels developing where you may really super serve your customers, whether it’s, in our case, for folks of young children or for European crime dramas,” he said, alluding to established services like BritBox and horror streamer Shudder.
“On-demand streaming, I believe, is definitely the best way to go.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC.