Beyond TV

October 2006

In today’s multi-platform world, kids’ channels must do
more than offer cool programming—they must connect with children in a
multitude of ways.

By Katy
Elliott

The early days of broadcasting brought us linear TV. Then
came the multichannel age, and now we’re in the third age—the even more
revolutionary era of on-demand content. And children are at the forefront of
embracing the world of portable media devices.

Taking British children as an
example, almost nine out of ten have a CD player, radio or MP3 player, and more
than a quarter own all three. Almost three-quarters of children in the U.K.
have Internet access at home, and more than a third have their own PC or
laptop. Eighty-five percent of children own game consoles, while almost all children
over 10 years old have their own cell phone and 30 percent of 7-to-8-year-olds
have one, too. One in eight children even has his own fridge in his room.

In the U.S., 80 percent of kids
have a TV in their room, 41 percent own their own video-game system and 33
percent use a cell phone. And according to research on multitasking, kids are
doing other things while online, including talking on the phone (24 percent),
watching TV (16 percent), playing video games (11 percent), and even doing
homework (20 percent).

For today’s under-16s, the idea of
having one mobile device that does everything for them—allowing them to
instant-message their friends while watching TV and restocking the fridge, for
example—does not seem a remotely odd, let alone daunting, future
prospect.

“Within five years, portable media
devices will be ubiquitous,” said Richard Deverell, the controller of BBC
Children’s, in a speech at the Showcomotion Young People’s Film Festival in
July. “Most will have radio, live television, local storage, broadband
connectivity and GPS enabling the delivery of location-specific content.
Children will increasingly regard BT [British Telecom], Google, Yahoo! and
Microsoft as some of the main paths to television and radio content.”

WHERE
THE KIDS ARE

This explains why the children’s TV channels tend to be
aggressively pursuing a 360-degree, platform-neutral approach to targeting
their audience. Kids are on the go and in the extraordinarily competitive world
of children’s television, broadcasters have got to keep up.

“Along with news and sport,
children’s TV lends itself to interactivity more than scripted drama or
comedy,” says Jim Samples, the executive VP and general manager of Cartoon
Network. “Kids are the early adopters. Our audience has grown up with the
Internet as a reality. They take for granted interacting with the TV and being
able to watch shows on their cell phones.”

Scott Garner, the senior VP of
programming at Disney Channel, agrees. “Kids today have many choices of where
they can connect with content. For Disney Channel and Jetix, being everywhere
kids are is essential. We believe windowing our content across the spectrum of
media is yet another way we connect with kids.”

Today’s youngsters are quite savvy
about all the media options they can choose from. “Kids don’t think just in
terms of TV,” says Markus Andorfer, the executive in charge of NICK and Comedy
Central in Germany. “They have a whole-platform approach. They are really grown
up and very well educated at handling platforms. We have to change our thinking
and serve all the platforms.”

“Children are becoming less and
less reliant on the TV box in the corner as a means of consuming content,”
agrees Jetix Europe’s CEO, Paul Taylor. “There is a multitude of media hardware
to deliver the software. We will continue to aggregate great content under the
Jetix kids’ brand and distribute it via any media in which they want to consume
it.”

All kids’ channels nowadays have
well-established websites—increasingly via broadband as well—and
games are the main attraction. These sites offer a great deal more than
programming information and they are continually growing in popularity. For
example, every month 1.4 million children watch the CBBC digital channel, but 4
million use the CBBC website. The number of kids visiting the website is
growing faster than the number of kids watching the channel, says Deverell.

“Today, about 45 percent of U.K.
children have access to broadband,” says Deverell. “That is growing rapidly.
And broadband used to mean 500 kilobytes per second—that was fast enough
for text web pages but painful for video. Now the best [deals] around offer 24
megabytes per second for less than £20 a month.”

In the U.S., CartoonNetwork.com
has seen a monthly rise in traffic. This year, the site had 5.8 million users
in June, compared with 4.7 million in April. One of its highlights has been Foster’s
Home for Imaginary Friends: Big Fat Awesome House Party, which launched in May and
provides players with the opportunity to create their own imaginary friend, go
on a variety of adventures, play mini games, collect items and explore the
Foster’s mansion in Cartoon Network’s biggest-ever online game. The yearlong
gaming event has attracted more than 3 million registrants, and an average game
playtime of 27 minutes.

“The biggest opportunity is with
games,” says Cartoon Network’s Samples. “Now there’s [a chance] to move from
single-player to multiplayer gaming. I’m most enthusiastic about that.” In
July, the channel announced its first massively multiplayer online game (MMOG),
which will debut in 2008 in partnership with a leading MMOG developer, the
Seoul-based Grigon Entertainment. “This is the first-ever partnership between a
U.S. entertainment company and a Korean developer to create an MMOG for the global
marketplace,” Samples says.

Some channels are choosing to
launch properties online, although Samples believes this only truly works if
the brand already has an established fan base. NICK in Germany, which is less
than a year old, launched SpongeBob SquarePants episodes on www.nick.tv three
weeks ahead of the TV premiere, simply to steal a lead on its competitor Super
RTL, with whom it still shares the TV rights to the series. In the autumn, NICK
will launch the broadband service TurboNick, which is already well established
in the U.S.

HIGH-SPEED
FUN

The BBC’s Deverell argues that TV and the web must be used
to strengthen each other because children will be the first to move seamlessly
across many different devices to access content. What’s more, children will
expect content aggregators to provide compelling content.

Deverell points to the CBBC show Level
Up as a great
example of how a television program and a website can strengthen each other,
with children and their ideas as the glue binding these two together. “Level
Up was conceived
as a pan-platform proposition,” says Deverell. “Too often we have good ideas
for television programs with an ‘interactive bit’ crudely bolted on as a late
afterthought. We have to move beyond that approach.”

“Level Up’s not necessarily receiving the
highest ratings,” he continues, “but it’s a great experiment for many reasons,
not least the traffic to the website and the blogs we are [testing].”

If content for broadband is
properly produced and presented, it can generate sampling that can help drive
ratings for the channels. A case in point is High School Musical.

But High School Musical was no ordinary TV movie—it
was a TV phenomenon. It gave Disney Channel U.S. the highest ratings the
channel ever had in its history. The soundtrack has gone triple platinum and
the DVDs, featuring dance instruction led by director and choreographer Kenny
Ortega, have been selling strongly. It has since launched in Australia and
Southeast Asia to a similar response.

In Disney terms, it’s not a
big-budget production (about $5 million), and it doesn’t have a star-studded
cast. But Disney used its marketing might to create the phenomenon: it
introduced the cast in a New Year’s Eve special; offered free downloads of the
song Breaking Free
through codes placed in ads at bus stops and malls; broadcast music videos;
played songs on Radio Disney’s 53 stations; and sent viewers to
DisneyChannel.com for lyrics to the movie’s songs. Between the movie’s premiere
and a karaoke version that aired at a later date, the site logged a record 1.2
million visitors and 500,000 downloads.

Children also enjoy websites by
building their own characters and shows. In the U.S., prior to the airing of
Nickelodeon’s one-hour movie Danny Phantom: The Ultimate Enemy, children could collect codes
from packaged goods such as cereals to unlock special powers online that would
help them build their own ghosts. In the week leading up to the movie’s
premiere, children could tune in to see if their ghost was one of the few
randomly selected to be shown on-air fighting other ghosts. “It was incredibly
creative,” says Karen Driscoll, the senior VP of strategic marketing at
Nickelodeon U.S. “Kids feel like they’re doing something exclusively. It’s a
totally customized experience of their own.”

Arne Lohmann, the director of
co-production, children and youth at Germany’s ZDF Enterprises, says he hopes
that by the end of the year ZDF will be offering web games in which kids can
build their own episodes of their favorite animation shows.

TALKING
BACK

Interactivity is really nothing new in children’s TV. But
while kids used to interact with the channel by mail or perhaps by phone, today
they have several ways of communicating with a channel and its shows. Texting,
online voting and interactive television—none of this is daunting to
children.

“So whilst we need to adapt to the
new media—audio and video—in which children are working, we do not
need to adapt culturally,” says the BBC’s Deverell. “We are already highly
receptive to their creativity.”

During May and June, Jetix Nordic
staged the first-ever multicountry text-to-TV event. Using Simcast technology,
viewers in Sweden, Denmark and Norway were able to play the text-to-TV treasure
hunt game SMX, which was broadcast for an hour every day during the shows
Sonic X,
W.I.T.C.H. and
Totally Spies.
Viewers had to watch the programs carefully in order to collect a full set of
character icons. The first viewer to collect all the icons won a prize.

The last year has also seen a
flurry of announcements of VOD and broadband launches. Jetix plans to roll out
VOD across Europe with multiple partners. It is testing a VOD service in France
through Canal+ Active, in Germany through T-Online’s video-on-demand ADSL
service, and in the U.K. on Telewest and NTL. In addition, it is currently
doing broadband TV trials in the Netherlands through the Jetix.nl website.

In the U.K., Cartoon Network leads
the way in VOD, having announced the launch of a re-branded video-on-demand
service called Cartoon Network Now (CN Now) on the cable platform Homechoice,
which will soon be on BT Vision as well. It is also making its first foray into
bespoke broadband content tailored to the PC on SuperCartoonNetwork.co.uk,
which will be available in the last quarter of this year.

Providing programming and even
full channels on mobile phones is generally at a more advanced stage. Jetix France, for example, is now
available via mobile on Orange and SFR networks, Jetix Sweden is available on
Tele2, and Jetix Nordic is in serious discussions with a number of other
operators. Jetix Spain has been testing the streaming of the whole channel,
available via mobile phones on Telefónica. And Pucca shorts are available via mobile
VOD across Europe.

AND
THE SHOW MUST GO ON

Curiously, the challenge of responding to the
opportunities represented by new technology has also focused the broadcasters’
attention on more traditional ways of communicating with their viewers. Road
shows and live events have become a mainstay of the 360-degree offering being provided
by kids’ channels. The Jetix Kids Awards, for example, is a live event that takes place annually. Kids vote
for what they believe are the best in a number of different entertainment
categories: for example, their favorite bands, artists, celebrities, films,
role models and so on. The award ceremony includes live musical acts, local
celebrities and key public figures such as Vaclav Klaus, the President of the
Czech Republic, who made an appearance at last year’s Jetix Kids Awards.

Another off-the-screen event
staged by Jetix is the Jetix Kids Cup, an international football tournament for
boys and girls under 13 years of age and the biggest media-owned event of its
kind. This year’s final took place in the Olympic Stadium in Munich at the
beginning of July and involved 24 teams from 12 countries: Brazil, Japan, the
U.S., the U.K., Georgia, Hungary, France, Italy, Israel, Spain, Austria and
Germany. “The global event promotes fair play, cultural exchange and an active
lifestyle,” says Jetix’s Taylor.

Developing content for portable
devices is becoming increasingly important for children’s channels. “Every time
we launch a show, we build in content for Apple’s iTunes stores and for
wireless partners—it’s a seamless part of what we do,” says Nickelodeon’s
Driscoll. “We reach kids through very high-tech means. But we are just as
interested in the grass-roots [activities], such as special screenings in local
cinemas.” She refers to the channel handing out phone cards in Spanish so
people could make calls to Latin America as an accompaniment to the launch of Go,
Diego, Go!
“There’s a nice mix of high-tech and low-tech,” she adds. “Kids’ habits are
changing, but they still live in communities. Technology is the way of the
future, but we’re still dealing with the reality of today.”

Nickelodeon Theatrical runs the
touring franchise Dora the Explorer Live! and last April launched a live musical spin-off of the
eponymous top preschool show, called Dora’s Pirate Adventure!, at Radio City Music Hall in New
York.

Meanwhile, as Nickelodeon’s Kids’
Choice Awards gear up to celebrate their 20th anniversary next year in Los
Angeles, their importance as part of the Nick offering is still growing. With
guest stars including Bruce Willis, Cameron Diaz, Whoopi Goldberg and Robin
Williams, the April ceremony was seen in more than 200 million households on
Nickelodeon’s international channels across the U.K., Europe, Russia, Israel,
Asia, Australia, Latin America and Brazil, as well as the U.S. The network’s
broadband video service TurboNick simulcast the event live, and free
promotional podcasts were available on nick.com. Nick.com also used webcams on
its site so kids could choose various camera angles such as behind-the-scenes,
an audience cam and more, while they watched the awards on TurboNick.

Following last year’s success,
Cartoon Network’s “Draw-A-Toon” competition returned in the U.K. this summer;
the winners’ work was showcased on the channel. In a tie-in with the
Chessington World of Adventures and Alton Towers theme parks, kids can attend
live master classes where they can learn how to draw some of their favorite
cartoon characters. Some 900,000 people were expected in those parks during the
summer.

In the U.K., Cartoon Network has
also launched a cinema campaign in partnership with Odeon theaters to show a
special five-minute promo of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends before all children’s movies: “We
expect 18 million admissions, so we are driving an overall awareness of Cartoon
Network and its shows and encouraging sampling,” says Nibs Dearsley, the
marketing director for Cartoon Network in the U.K.

But for the time being at least,
TV remains the critical medium for reaching children and the lead source of
revenue: “Our windowing strategy has the linear channel at its center,” says
Disney Channel’s Garner. “While the importance of emerging platforms will
continue to evolve and gain traction in the coming weeks, months and years, the
penetration and ubiquity of TV offers kids around the world immediate access to
our Disney Channel and Jetix brands.”

“TV is still our main shop
window—you still establish a brand by TV, and we will continue to do so
for the foreseeable future regardless of the delivery,” agrees Jetix’s Taylor.

Cartoon Network’s Samples, too,
believes that TV is still the lead. In fact, children are watching more TV than
ever—they are just doing other things at the same time. And if a producer
is going to reversion content to deliver the bite-sized bursts suited to
broadband or mobile phones, for example, television is the best medium for
developing characters and story lines that can then be adapted. “TV also allows
us to make the kinds of investments we need because the critical mass is
there,” says Samples. “In my opinion, it’s very difficult to launch a show on
new media. Those that do will usually be related to properties and shows that
are already established.”

Whatever the form of delivery, the
message continues to be unified: “Television programs and other forms of
content that fail to intrigue, delight, surprise or satisfy will simply be
invisible,” says the BBC’s Deverell. “They need to be the sort of thing that
you wouldn’t expect for children. Only the brilliantly unexpected will stand
out.”