MIPCOM & MIPJunior: The Week in Kids

Sunny skies may have greeted MIPJunior attendees in Cannes last week, but the stark data released by Ampere Analysis on the kids’ commissioning landscape before the market’s official kick-off at the JW Marriott made clear that the segment will need an abundance of creativity to make it through the choppy forecasts.

RX Global expanded the MIPJunior schedule this year with the Friday opening of the screenings library and an illuminating session moderated by WildBrain’s Deirdre Brennan and featuring Keith Chapman, PBS KIDS’ Sara DeWitt and Blue Spirit’s Olivier Lelardoux. Before their discussion under the theme State of the Kids Entertainment Industry: Challenges & Opportunities, Cyrine Amor, senior analyst at Ampere Analysis, presented data on the realities of those challenges. Global commissions of kids’ shows are down 48 percent since February 2022. Overall, kids’ titles commissions fell 21 percent—almost double the 11 percent decline in all genres. The cutbacks have been most significant at the U.S. SVOD and pay-TV services. U.S. public-service broadcast commissions were fairly stable, but pay-TV commissions slumped 53 percent and SVOD 33 percent. In Western Europe, PSB commissioning has fallen by 19 percent, while the SVODs and pay TV were fairly stable. The pressures on the market are causing commissioners to rely more on known IP, which accounted for more than 50 percent of new commissions in the U.S. and the big European territories. Amor also highlighted the shifts in distribution strategies and the challenges of discovery and referenced the importance of ubiquitous distribution, a key theme of the weekend’s panel on multiplatform distribution strategies with Banijay Kids & Family’s Delphine Dumont, Moonbug Entertainment’s Andy Yeatman and Spin Master Entertainment’s Jennifer Dodge, moderated by TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski.

“Our fundamental philosophy is to meet kids where they are,” Yeatman said. “We want our content to be wherever kids and families spend time. We know kids are platform-agnostic, so we try to have our shows be on as many of the major platforms where families spend time around the world.”

At Banijay Kids & Family, Dumont noted the challenges around commissioners and buyers wanting exclusive rights. “We have to find common ground and ensure we retain as much as we can to exploit it successfully on digital platforms.”

Dodge runs the entertainment unit of the toy company Spin Master. “For us, it’s all about building brands and franchises and taking a franchise-management approach to how we look at each property or piece of IP and making content for every size screen, every platform imaginable.”

Franchise management was also a key theme of the opening keynote delivered by Ramsey Naito, the president of Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation, in conversation with TV Kids’ Anna Carugati. The combination of Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation under Naito’s remit “has allowed us to embrace theatricals and series and franchise planning in a smart way. It allows us to launch a movie and think about how we are launching a series thereafter and how we may want to plan for character-driven movies that will continue to expand the universe and connect to an audience.”

The value of a known brand was also highlighted by Victoria Lozano, executive VP at Crayola, as she unveiled the vision for Crayola Studios in a MIPJunior keynote. Crayola is expanding into the entertainment space with Crayola Studios “because kids need a champion,” Lozano said in her session, moderated by TV Kids’ Brzoznowski. “Who better than Crayola to step up and advocate for this, to help parents nurture that creativity and to make a societal paradigm shift in how creativity is valued and nurtured?”

That recurring theme of known IP also emerged in the raft of deal news out of MIPJunior—which welcomed 1,221 delegates from 63 countries—and MIPCOM last week. Hasbro and ABC Australia signed a new broadcast deal to bring season one of Transformers: EarthSpark to certain ABC platforms. The Smurfs animated series was picked up for a third season, set to be broadcast globally by Nickelodeon and on local free-to-air in 2024. Pocket.watch and the Kaji family-owned Sunlight Entertainment expanded the Ryan’s World brand with Ryan’s World Pirate Adventures, building on the successful Ryan’s World Pirate YouTube videos. Atlantyca Entertainment extended its long-running partnerships with Italy’s Rai and Spain’s RTVE for the beloved Geronimo Stilton. Indeed, book and graphic novel adaptations and partnering with acclaimed authors remain key. BBC and BYUtv greenlit a second season of the live-action series A Kind of Spark from 9 Story Media Group. Lion Forge Entertainment scored a first-look deal with award-winning Nigerian creator and producer Roye Okupe, founder of YouNeek Studios and creator of the YouNeek YouNiverse. They are already working together on the animated fantasy series Iyanu for Max and Cartoon Network, based on the award-winning graphic novel Iyanu: Child of Wonder. CBC Kids came on board as a commissioning broadcaster for Hop, the new preschool comedy series from the creator of Arthur, Marc Brown. CBeebies commissioned season two of Maramedia’s Olga da Polga from best-selling children’s author Michael Bond (Paddington).

And while it is getting harder, breakout new ideas can still cut through and charm audiences. The second season of Fia’s Fairies, from Little Moon Animation, is set to bow on RTÉjr in February 2025. Designed to support new ideas, the MIPJunior Pitch was won this year by The Adventures of Team Pom.