TV Kids at MIPJunior: Resources for the Weekend

Before you head to the JW Marriott this weekend, tap into all of TV Kids’ MIPJunior resources, including our October edition, featuring insights on acquisition strategies, known IP, AVOD deals and more; the latest edition of the TV Kids Guide; and our Screening Rooms, highlighting some of the new content launching in Cannes.

We all know how much time kids are spending on YouTube, but they’re also engaging with their favorite YouTube characters on a raft of other platforms. Children’s media expert Emily Horgan, who runs The Kids StreamerSphere newsletter, has been doing a deep dive into Netflix’s data dumps and found that of the SVOD platform’s top ten kids’ IPs, four were born on YouTube.

Among them is CoComelon Lane, a spin-off of the Moonbug Entertainment IP. “There’s a well-defined trend that global engagement with CoComelon overall on Netflix is softening,” Horgan explains. “The new spin-off show isn’t making up the difference for the decline in the original. That’s despite new series of both still coming consistently. It’s worth mentioning that this trend is also hinted at in U.S. Nielsen streaming rankings.”

For Horgan, the big question now is, “Who will take advantage of this space left by CoComelon? Perhaps it would be impossible for there to be any original new competitor because coming up on YouTube [for kids] hasn’t been possible in the past five years since the advertising crackdown.”

Therein lies one of the biggest problems for kids’ IP owners today—how to create awareness for a brand and then, crucially, how to sustain it. Having known IP helps, as the team at Moonbug will tell you, but as Horgan’s data analysis indicates, awareness just isn’t enough. I explore the challenges and opportunities of working with existing properties in our MIPCOM and MIPJunior edition, speaking with a range of IP owners on spotting brands that are ripe for adaptation or reinvention and keeping their success year after year. That theme runs across the Q&As in this edition, including with Margie Cohn at DreamWorks Animation, Ramsey Naito at Paramount Animation and Nickelodeon Animation and Alyssa Sapire at Disney Jr.; all are mining their deep libraries alongside searching for the next great kids’ IP. We also hear from Jed Elinoff and Scott Thomas about their approach to resurrecting Wizards of Waverly Place more than a decade since that show wrapped its run.

Of course, part of maintaining a franchise involves ensuring it’s well-distributed, so we surveyed a range of executives about tapping into YouTube, clinching AVOD and FAST deals and refining windowing strategies amid a slowdown in commissioning. The theme across all of our coverage is it’s rough out there, but kids still want great storytelling and characters they can engage with across platforms; the key for the industry is figuring out how to fill that need with an economic model that makes sense for everyone.

You will find lots of great storytelling and characters for kids in our Screening Rooms for the market and in our recent TV Kids Screenings Festival.