Leading Programmers Talk Acquisition Trends

The fifth edition of the TV Kids Festival kicked off today with our signature session on acquisition strategies, this time hearing from ITV’s Darren Nartey, Nickelodeon’s Lynsey O’Callaghan and Amazon Kids+’s Monica Sharma.

The Decision-Makers panel, moderated by TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski, featured an engaging conversation among Nartey, senior acquisitions manager for films and kids at ITV; O’Callaghan, senior director for international acquisitions and current series for Nickelodeon at Paramount; and Sharma, head of video business development at Amazon Kids+. It can be viewed in its entirety here.

For ITV, acquisitions are “an incredibly important part of our business strategy,” Nartey said, accounting for about 80 percent of its kids’ output. “Coming out of Covid, with a lot of production being delayed, acquisitions were extremely useful. The strategy is less risky because you are picking up content that has been tried and tested.”

ITV shuttered CITV in 2023 and, as a result, “needed to quickly up the number of hours on our new AVOD platform, ITVX, and ITVX Kids. Acquisitions were a great way for us to step up in terms of the different genres we could offer kids in the U.K. and the different types of stories.”

Amazon Kids+ offers episodic content and films as well as games, books, podcasts, music and Alexa skills, Sharma explained. “Across all of these content types, most of our content is acquired.”

Similarly, at Nick, “acquisitions are hugely important to us, across our whole international footprint,” O’Callaghan noted. “They allow us to deliver brilliant titles alongside our beloved brands. They also allow us to diversify our points of view, with voices from creators, distributors and producers from around the world, so they enhance and ensure we’re reflective of the children worldwide who are watching us. They also allow us to deliver on business obligations with our affiliates in various territories. We would be lost without acquisitions.”

Asked about changes to their strategies in the last year or so, Nartey referenced the closure of CITV and noted, “The difficulty that we’re all having to grapple with in our industry is the migration of kids from linear to YouTube, TikTok and a lot of those social media platforms. That was part of the reason why CITV closed. With ITVX, we found an opportunity to try to widen out what we were doing.”

That included expanding its slate of girl-skewed content, Nartey said, adding, “It didn’t have to be self-contained episodes as well—we were able to experiment with the types of stories we were bringing in. The last couple of years has been a big experimental phase for ITV.”

Nartey has his eye on more boy-skewed comedy, noting that ITV has several girl-skewed commissions in the works. “CITV used to be a very boy-skewed channel. We had a lot of success with things like Horrid Henry and The Rubbish World of Dave Spud, so I would like to find that one U.K. property, ideally with a regional voice in it.”

Comedy-driven shows remain at the heart of Nickelodeon’s positioning, O’Callaghan said. “We would love to see more live-action comedies because they’re extremely important in certain regions, such as the U.K.,” she said.

O’Callaghan also referenced a change in her rights acquisition strategy. “We have condensed a lot of our channels onto our global feeds. Therefore, we’re looking for more and wider rights to cover all the different territories. Before, we could operate smaller deals in certain regions; we now have to look much broader and wider. However, we’re always committed to operating and utilizing great content in the territories where we can.”

At Amazon Kids+, which is purely a subscription service, the strategy for acquisitions and originals “is focused on known brands and known IPs,” Sharma said. “We want to get stuff kids that love and put it on our service. It could be an existing show. It could be content that’s based on a toy property, a game or a YouTuber. What’s important for us is keeping a pulse of what’s changing with kids today. They’re migrating to different platforms. It’s about understanding what’s going on with them. Amazon is a data-driven company. If it is a YouTuber, how many views do they have? What’s the subscriber base? If it is content based on a toy property or a book, what were their sales last year? We want to have the brands that kids love in our service.”

Drilling down further into the specifics of what they’re looking for, Nartey is open to all genres, “but it has to sit within the 6-to-12 age bracket. Preschool is not a huge priority at the moment, because of [our] pipeline. That may change in a couple of years.”

Nick targets a broad 2-to-12 audience, but “hitting those kids in the upper cusp of our target is getting trickier as they move on to other platforms and socials, looking at older content that perhaps they shouldn’t be,” O’Callaghan said. “We have to recognize that our sweet spot is probably younger than it was a few years ago. That said, we don’t want to exclude those older kids, so we want content to still appeal to them.”

Preschool remains key for the entire Paramount Kids & Family portfolio, with O’Callaghan seeking “strong series that will offer our schedules a new dimension for audiences to explore and opportunities for co-viewing. The target for preschool is 4-plus as the sweet spot, not excluding the younger ones but also providing the stakes and stories that will keep the older kids engaged and fully focused on the screen. Bridge titles are super important to us as well. They provide a great utility because we can use them on Nick Jr., Nick and Nicktoons in certain regions, and they’re a great way for kids to transition from the youngest channels to the older ones.”

Comedies that can sit alongside juggernauts like SpongeBob SquarePants are high on O’Callaghan’s wish list. “They do have to be hilarious, not just funny, to compete with what we already have on our schedules. And live action is of interest in the 11- or 22-minute duration.”

Like Nartey, O’Callaghan is open to prebuys and straight acquisitions. “In the younger space, we prefer a prebuy position because it allows us to curate, ensure it’s on brand and meets compliance, standards and practices, etc. But we are very flexible in terms of how we can work.”

Amazon Kids+ is available in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Germany and Japan, targeting kids 3 to 12. “We’re always on the lookout for preschool and older kid content and bridge content,” Sharma said. “Older kids are transitioning to other platforms at a younger age, so we’re looking for how to find that content that keeps older kids engaged. For preschoolers, we have a healthy mix of entertainment and edutainment, shows that nurture curiosity and learning. For older kids, it’s more on the entertainment side. How do we ensure they watch the whole season and then come back and watch the season again? That’s sometimes hard to find for older kids today because they’re not watching a lot of the traditional content.”

The conversation then moved to the creator economy and its role as a content source for the panelists.

“If it has calls to action—if the video says ‘like and subscribe’—we have to remove that,” Sharma said. “If there’s branded content or advertising innate to the video, we’ll have to remove that. It’s making sure that the content is safe for our audiences. We’ve licensed a lot of content from YouTube creators. We’ve seen the content that we’ve licensed for older kids popping. It’s something that we are keeping tabs on.”

Nickelodeon has succeeded with Ryan’s Mystery Playdate and the Instagram-inspired Tiny Chef. “We’re fully aware of how these creators and content can transition,” O’Callaghan said. “However, just because something works well on another platform, that doesn’t necessarily mean it will transfer to yours effortlessly. Once it’s pushed through a brand filter, compliance, standards and practices, it can often remove the thing that pulls those followers to the creator. It’s vital that you don’t dilute the very thing that makes that creator special. Also, make sure that they’ve got longevity and that by transitioning them onto your platform, linear or SVOD, you’re additive to what’s already there.”

“There are shows that have had success on YouTube and our platforms,” Nartey noted, “but the ones that tend to suffer are the creator-led content. We find the audience prefers to watch them in that medium. But we’re very open-minded. If an idea comes through that we think is worth trying, then we would certainly have a go. But as things stand, we’re not actively seeking. That’s not to say we don’t have our own YouTube strategy for having official channels or working with some of the creators via marketing to help build awareness of our platforms. But in terms of lifting their content and putting it on our platforms, we’re some way off that.”

In terms of market gaps, beyond live-action comedies, O’Callaghan is also seeking “more content that you genuinely feel can be the evergreens of the future. Whether that’s a unique hook, tapping into something we haven’t seen before or providing co-viewing potential. Fewer, bigger, better and quality over quantity.”

Non-scripted is an area of interest for Amazon Kids+, Sharma said. “We don’t see a lot of that out in the market. Unscripted is an area that I feel is pretty untapped. It has the pluses of being quicker to produce and getting it out to market faster; you can see the performance data much quicker and often is cheaper to produce.”

Nartey also pointed to the lack of available live-action non-scripted. “I appreciate it’s quite difficult because, with some formats, we would love to localize it rather than just acquire it.”

Non-scripted live-action “can be a quicker turnaround,” Nartey continued, “but it can be quite expensive, and there are issues filming with kids in different territories, especially in the U.K. regarding insurance.”

The discussion then moved to rights negotiations and the panelists’ perspectives on exclusivity.

O’Callaghan referenced Nick’s increasing focus on expanded rights internationally for its acquisitions. “We have had to be more flexible there to make deals work because the rights have already been presold in certain territories. We’ve had to play more nicely with everybody in terms of what we’re looking for. Also, it’s harder for people to get their series fully funded at the moment. We are open to flexibility and using strategies like holdbacks and windows where we can in certain territories to get things made. In certain territories, we are looking for wider pay and free rights. Paramount+ has added a level of looking for broader rights.”

Prebuys are becoming more important for Nick, O’Callaghan said, adding that, at times, having a ubiquitous distribution strategy can help build a brand. “With a fragmented audience, all ships rise sometimes with the more platforms your content is on. We have affiliate obligations regarding where our content is made available, but we are always open to making things work for great content for our audiences.”

Much of Amazon Kids+’s video lineup is non-exclusive, Sharma said. “A lot of it is library; we don’t need it to be exclusive. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t have exclusive titles. Exclusive titles are great for marketing, user acquisition and PR. It’s finding that balance of what needs to be exclusive and what doesn’t and having a healthy mix. We have the same philosophy not just for shows and movies but also for games.”

Sharma stressed that, given its five-country footprint, the platform does not need global rights. “For commissions or prebuys, we’re doing co-productions with companies in other territories.”

ITV has shared content with Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Amazon and Netflix, Nartey said. “It’s very much a case-by-case basis. When that [rights] question comes up, often it’s around YouTube. It comes down to our investment. If we’re putting in a hefty chunk of money, we wouldn’t expect the producer to put it all on YouTube then. We are happy to share depending on what our investment is and what the ask is.”

The panelists then talked about how their respective services are using YouTube. “We have to be quite strategic in how we engage with it,” Nartey said. “We ask for YouTube rights as part of any deals that we do. Anything we put out on YouTube helps with discoverability. It is a very important platform, but it’s a very different platform from what we are. We are a heavily curated service for kids; in that space, it’s about algorithms and recommendations. It’s the relationship between ITV and YouTube that we have to build.”

Sharma said that Amazon Kids+ has seen some success with trailers and series premieres on YouTube. “We find it to be a good tool for discovery. We’re reevaluating our strategy and thinking about how we want to work with it going forward. We know kids are engaging with it. We know that it’s a powerful platform. YouTube is a competitor to all of our services. So, how do you use it in the most effective way? That’s the question a lot of us are facing right now.”

“Nickelodeon is passionate about being everywhere kids are,” O’Callaghan said. “Not being on YouTube wouldn’t reflect what we set out to do. We’re successful with our channels and content on YouTube. It’s important to us in a number of ways. Firstly, it is a tool to support current brands on air by making bespoke content and montages or using our successful Toymation channel. It’s become increasingly important to launch new brands. We are launching our first-ever animated original, Kid Cowboy, a short-form preschool series, on YouTube. We are growing the brand and seeing if it can transition off the YouTube platform.”