Category: Kids

Led by the creation of a 12-carat total weight diamond

-encrusted SpongeBob pendant to be auctioned off for charity, the entire retail collection will feature a variety of fashionable, distinctive and avant-garde designs utilising materials such as enamel, gold, silver, and diamonds under the design direction of 2009 GEM Award recipient for Jewelry Style, Russell Simmons.

KMI will invest Rs 600-700 million in Spacetoon Kids TV, the free-to-air Hindi channel, over three years. A library of 4200 episodes has been built with content sourced from producers and studios across Europe, Asia and North America.

Positioned as an edutainment channel, Spacetoon Kids TV will target the age group of 2 to 12 years with a mix of animation and live action content.

The channel plans to pump up one hour of localised content by April-May. “We are looking at gaming and interactive reality shows as part of our localisation strategy. We will first create one hour of local content. Our plan is to have 90 per cent of animated content and 10 per cent of live action localised content built over a period of time,” says Sangri.

KMI hopes to scale down its original investment outlay for distribution in the wake of economic slowdown. Sangri had earlier told Indiantelevision.com that the channel, set for launch on 14 January, would spend Rs 250 million on carriage in delivery platforms such as cable TV networks and DTH.

“Broadcasters are rationalising their distribution budgets and there seems to be some sort of a correction in carriage fees. We expect our distribution costs to be lower than what we had initially estimated for,” says Sangri.

Spacetoon Kids TV will have to jostle with seven existing channels to tap into 360 million kids in India. Sun TV Network also operates a Tamil language channel, Chutti TV. The genre also has not grown in 2008 and advertising revenues are beginning to slow down with the total pie pegged at Rs 1.5 billion.

“India is a very tough market to launch as it is too diversified and each needs to be targeted differently,” says Sangri.

Sangri realises that part of the fight will be in aggressive marketing of the channel. KMI is, thus, tying up with various schools to promote awareness of the brand.

“We are in the process of establishing tie-ups with 3000 schools pan India,” says Sangri.

KMI, which is already into publishing, events and licensing and merchandising, is also working out a consolidated strategy with the TV channel as the tentpole property. “We will leverage across our various properties,” says Sangri.

The toons will be accompanied by MTV Roadies and Bigg Boss winner Ashutosh Kaushik.

The channel will showcase two game shows – Hole in the Wall and Takeshi‘s Castle – in a special programming block ‘Kabhi Crash, Kabhi Splash‘ every Friday at 12:30 pm.

Turner, however, hopes to maintain the 11 per cent ad growth in 2009 from its two channels Cartoon Network and Pogo, which dominate the kids TV space, with a thrust on brand value propositions to advertisers.

Turner will also focus on upping licensing and merchandising revenues which accounted for 10 per cent of the kitty in 2008.

“We posted a 11 per cent ad growth in 2008 from our kids channels. Our efforts will be to grow at the same speed in 2009. We are also looking at exploiting our products through licensing and merchandising. We see an opportunity particularly in promotional licensing,” says Tata.

The kids TV market is pegged at Rs 1.5 billion, a major chunk of which is parcelled out to Cartoon Network and Pogo. Walt Disney Company, which acquired local channel Hungama to shore up its market share, is the next biggest revenue earner, followed by a resurgent Nick.

The global economic meltdown has made clients and advertisers cautious about their ad spend. “We are countering this through our marketing initiatives and are adding value to our clients and their products,” says Tata.

Kids channels are already under pressure to move to quarterly deals with big advertisers. Admits Tata, “Many of our clients, who earlier were open to signing annual deals with us, are now looking at quarterly agreements. Hence, we are looking at creating brand value for our advertisers and marrying them with our products for various marketing initiatives.”

Turner is also planning to expand in the areas of localised animated content, film production, and syndication exploitation. For Cartoon Network, the focus will be to increase Indian animation content.

Says Tata, “We have 20 Indian animation shows/features playing on CN and they have really worked well for us. Our 2009 focus will be to expand on Indian animation content for CN.”

Pogo’s focal point will be to expand their original production. “Pogo has approximately 200 hours of original content. We aim to scale that up,” says Tata.

The pick-up will bring the total order to 52 new episodes of the show, which will premiere on Nickelodeon following Nickelodeon‘s 22nd Annual Kids‘ Choice Awards on Saturday, 28 March 28 at 9.30 pm. The series will then move to its regular timeslot on Saturdays at 10 am, beginning 4 April.

The Penguins of Madagascar is based on the penguin brothers in DreamWorks Animation‘s feature films Madagascar ($532 million worldwide gross) and Madagascar 2: Escape to Africa ($519 million worldwide as of January 2009).

The series is being produced at the Nickelodeon Animation Studios in Burbank, California.

“Our partnership with DreamWorks Animation has yielded a true gem in The Penguins of Madagascar. We‘re excited to be bringing these characters to our audience with the same level of excellence they have come to expect from the hit Madagascar feature films,” said Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group president Cyma Zarghami.

The Penguins of Madagascar is executive produced by Mark McCorkle and Bob Schooley, (Disney‘s Kim Possible and Hercules, Sky High) and reprises the voices of Tom McGrath as Skipper and Andy Richter (Late Night with Conan O‘ Brien) as Mort. Additional voices include Jeff Bennett (Enchanted) as Kowalski, James Patrick Stuart (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) as Private, John DiMaggio (Futurama) as Rico, Nicole Sullivan (Mad TV) as Marlene, and Danny Jacobs (Futurama) stars as Julien, King of the Lemurs.