KidsCo Launches Across Central, Eastern Europe

LONDON, September 7: KidsCo, the joint venture channel owned by Sparrowhawk Media, DIC Entertainment and Corus Entertainment’s Nelvana Enterprises, has launched across Central and Eastern Europe in Romania, Hungary, Russia, Turkey and Poland after carriage deals were secured with cable operators in those territories.

Broadcast deals have also been signed in the Ukraine, where KidsCo will launch next month, and in the Asia-Pacific region, where the channel will rollout by early 2008. It is anticipated that KidsCo will be available in up to 40 territories—including Europe and Latin America— within the next 18 months.

KidsCo features animated and live-action television series and feature-length movies from DIC and Nelvana. DIC’s programming library features over 3,000 half-hours of animated series like Inspector Gadget, Strawberry Shortcake, Madeline, Dennis the Menace, Care Bears and more. With more than 3,000 half-hours of kids’ programming, Nelvana Enterprises’ catalogue features titles such as Babar, Franklin, The Adventures of Tintin and Rolie Polie Olie. KidsCo has also acquired programming from other major children’s content suppliers after signing deals with Entertainment Rights and TV-Loonland. KidsCo programming is being localized market-by-market and has been programmed by day-parts to create a strategic line-up targeting segmented audiences.

“The level of enthusiasm by platforms for KidsCo has been fantastic,” said KidsCo managing director Paul Robinson. “We knew that this was going to be a sure-fire hit because of the level of expertise of the venture partners and the outstanding content they have available. We also knew we had an innovative business model with this collaboration and it seems our affiliates believe we’ve got it exactly right—which has enabled us to be this aggressive with the roll-out of KidsCo.”