ITV

Tag: Kids broadcasters

  • Digitisation the potential game changer for kids TV

    Digitisation the potential game changer for kids TV

    The Mayans got it wrong and thankfully so!

    As we bid adieu to the Year of the Dragon, India has already added approx. 30 million children to its burgeoning population of 330 million kids. Thanks to the growing population, there has been an explosion in demand for kids’ specific products and services, not to mention their need for entertainment. Hence avenues of entertainment multiplied and kids TV not only witnessed growth but also saw new offerings.

    The children’s appetite to be entertained continued to be insatiable. Kids broadcasters rose to the occasion to fulfil this need with tailor made offerings. Animation continued to rule the roost as it is timeless and transports children to an alternate world of escapism and fantasy, which live actions shows are challenged with. The Indian animation industry came of age with locally produced content. The highlight has been the development of original and endearing characters and content like Motu Patlu, Keymon Ache etc which have made great inroads into the category.

    Comedy, Action and Value Based shows continued to be the category drivers. Bollywood went on to have a huge influence on children, which also got mirrored in the shows. Characters kept to rule the hearts of kids and were larger than the channels that carried them. Hence 3-4 shows based on these characters continued to garner the maximum GRPs.

    Kids continued to shape the buying patterns of their families. From vacation choices to car purchases to meal selections, they exerted tremendous power over the family pocketbook. While kids are almost in- house consultants, marketers and broadcasters have been very mindful while communicating with them.

    With 8% – 9% genre share, the kids genre is the 4th largest viewed in CS4+; larger than news and music (the word ‘Niche’ used traditionally to categorise the kids genre should be termed ‘Special Interest’). Within 4-14 years itself, it is the second largest genre with 23% share, second only to GECs. The 4-9-year-olds remained being the loyal viewers. 10-14 years remain the flirtatious/closet watchers. The category viewership continued to be driven by boys while the girls indulged in kitchen politics.

    Despite many players in the category, over 70% viewership was concentrated within the top 4 players. Despite all the fragmentation, the category has grown by 5% CAGR in the last 5 years.

    Challenges

    While the kids genre contributes 8% viewership share of the CS4+, it accounts for a mere 2% ad revenue share. Hence there is a huge potential for growth and this has to get corrected over a period of time through rate correction and non FCT partnerships. While pester power plays a role in brand purchases (candies, chocolates, biscuits, toys etc.), the control of the purse strings are still with the parents. Parents are not the primary audience for kids channels (while there is co-viewing but the level of viewer engagement is low) and hence advertisers are not paying premium dollars.

    Multiple Entrants – The fragmentation in the kids category is increasing by the day with over a dozen national players existing currently. This has led to the viewership and share of the revenue pie being divided between the players. The challenge the genre faces is on generating revenue beyond spots and that is something the category needs to seriously introspect. Over reliance on FCT to generate top line and over supply of inventory has led to spot rates being depressed.

    Marketing to Kids – Kids as an audience are a tough bunch to target. They barely consume print and outdoor. A large chunk of the marketing investment is on BTL activities such as School Contact Programmes, retail activation and direct consumer contact using multiple on-round vehicles which have an extremely high cost per contact. The wired kid of today is more tech savvy than his parents. The dependence on the digital and online medium is fast increasing.

    2013 – Trends & Roadmap

    Digitisation will be a game-changer in 2013. We are already witnessing the benefits of the 1st phase of the rollout. This has benefited not only the consumers (more channel offerings and of superior quality) but also broadcasters.

    Digitisation will give an impetus to ‘special interest’ channels and hence create space for broadcasters to create categories to address specific need gaps, like Sonic, the Action Adventure channel for boys or Nick Jr., the play-and-learn platform for pre-schoolers. Digitisation will go a long way in better ROIs and hence better business models for television.

    Lines across platforms & screens will blur further in 2013. Content consumption will become increasingly platform agnostic. Kids content creators will now make their content and characters available to kids across platforms, be it TV, Computers, Tablets or Phones.

    As Indian animation comes of age and more home grown characters (not just mythological ones) are developed, Indian animation will make a mark on the global map as it moves from being an outsourcing industry to an original content creator with Shows like Shaktiman, Chhota Bheem, etc. that can travel overseas.

    The “Touch.Play.Feel” mantra will take on a whole new dimension. Most kids broadcasters will be aiming to move beyond Television and form a Kids Ecosystem. Broadcasters may leverage their platform strength and influential characters to create interesting Entertainment offshoots beyond television. Consumer Products, Theme Parks, Retail Stores, etc. may be the next BIG opportunity for broadcasters.

    So let me leave you with the thought that this TG is a formidable one and will keep the marketers and broadcasters on their toes. Kids broadcasters will need to continuously re-invent themselves to stay relevant to this ever evolving and dynamic bunch of consumers.

    2013 will be an exciting year with lots to look forward to. Wish everyone a very successful and profitable year!

  • Kids broadcasters gear up to play in India’s digital era

    Kids broadcasters gear up to play in India’s digital era

    Grappling with an under-indexed ad market and audience fragmentation due to entry of new players, kids TV broadcasters found hope in cable TV digitisation towards the end of 2012. Particularly encouraging was the launch of preschool channels, a segment that existed only as programming blocks and was looked upon as commercially unviable in India.

    Out of the four channel launches, two were in the preschool segment. The launch of Disney Junior and Nick Jr, in fact, marked the beginning of segmentation in the hyper-competitive kids TV genre.

    The other two launches were equally significant as it marked the entry of both Discovery and Zee. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Ltd (Zeel) plans to invest Rs 1 billion in the edutainment channel, ZeeQ, over a period of five years.

    For Discovery Kids, ZeeQ and the other two new channels, subscription is going to be the main business model. The existing kids channels, in contrast, are heavily dependent on ad sales where subscription revenue is still very small and licensing and merchandising negligible.

    Of the four, three excluding Discovery Kids have been launched only for digital platforms. The launch of ZeeQ, which has been positioned as an edutainment channel, has completed Zeel’s bouquet that virtually covers every genre.

    Digitisation is expected to bring down carriage fees that has been a bane for a lot of broadcasters and bring in the much needed transparency of the subscriber base declared by the cable TV operators. Broadcasters expect their affiliate revenues to jump in the medium-to-long term.

    “Digitisation will allow us to try focussed segmentation which we could not have done in analogue cable TV environment. Today in digital, we can segment as much as we can. Carriage payouts will no longer be a deterrent and pay revenues can only grow. So we are all riding the wave of digital right now and hoping that while we cater to need gaps, we also make business sense,” Viacom18 EVP & business head – Kids Cluster Nina Elavia Jaipuria had told Indiantelevision.com in an earlier interview.

    Agrees Disney UTV executive director and Disney kid’s network business head Vijay Subramaniam, “The timing (of Disney Junior’s launch) was an important consideration as digitisation is a very effective way to bring such a high-quality channel to be made available in market to the consumers.”

    Subramaniam feels that with digitisation segmentation will only become clearer as it already existed in different forms. “If you look at the landscape segmentation already exists with digitisation it will become clearer and quality of reception will become a constant,” he explains.

    Despite the right noises made about digitisation and the possible benefits that it would bring for the industry, British pubcaster BBC surprisingly shut its kids channel Cbeebies.

    In an interview to Indiantelevision.com, BBC Worldwide Channels, Asia senior VP, GM, Mark Whitehead had cited “the uniquely challenging pay TV market in India and the delays to digitisation” as the prime reasons for shutting Cbeebies along with BBC Entertainment.

    Whitehead had also confessed that running an ad free channel like Cbeebies is unviable as advertising is currently a major source of revenue for pay TV channels in India.

    The difficulty faced by BBC in running an ad-free channel is not lost on Indian kids broadcasters. Though ad-free in the initial stage, both Disney Junior and Nick Jr. will have ads going forward. They will, however, be selective about the ads that they carry on their respective channels.

    “We may consider hybrid sponsorship model in stage two from 12-24 months from now,” avers Subramaniam.

    Even ZeeQ, which is a bi-lingual channel targeted at 4-14 kids, has a strict ad policy to avoid ads that promote unhealthy lifestyle.

    This will mean that broadcasters will not be at the mercy of ad revenue, which is currently the mainstay for most children channels. With the kind of pester power that these channels enjoy, the broadcasters sense an opportunity to exploit in a digital era when brand loyalty will come into play.

    Apart from the business model correction that is expected to happen with digitisation, the kids channels will also get enough headroom to experiment with content by trying their hands at new genres. Developing locally relevant content will be foremost on the minds of most broadcasters.

    Viewership and ad scenario

    While the genre grew at 4 per cent to reach 616 GRPs till week 40 of 2012, it still bettered the previous year’s performance of two per cent growth. In 2010, the genre grew at a whopping 13 per cent which remains the best year for kids broadcasters over a five-year period since 2008.

    The ad market for the genre is Rs 2.5 billion and has room for fast growth as the market is under-indexed. It is expected to grow at 10 per cent year-on-year as new advertisers make efforts to reach out to kids.

    “While the kids genre contributes 8 per cent viewership share of the CS4+, it accounts for a mere 2 per cent ad revenue share. Hence there is a huge potential for growth and this has to get corrected over a period of time through rate revisions and non FCT partnerships,” avers Jaipuria.

    Localisation push and movie airings

    Kids broadcasters continued their push towards localisation with Nick taking the rights of Reliance Animation’s animated show Shaktimaan while Pogo continued to build its favourite property Chhota Bheem.

    In continuation of its strategy to push local live action series, Disney aired new seasons of Best of Luck Nikki and The Suite Life of Karan and Kabir. The channel is betting big on live action notwithstanding the skepticism surrounding it.

    Discovery Kids launched its first local production, Mystery Hunters India, as part of its localisation strategy for the channel.

    ZeeQ, whose content is being looked after by Zee Learn, has several local shows under its belt including Teenovation, Wordmatch, and Brain Café. Additionally, it had also acquired the rights for 26 episodes of Amar Chitra Katha (ACK) from Ideas Box Entertainment.

    The year saw the theatrical debut of Nick India’s local character Keymon with Keymon Ache & Nani in Space Adventure movie.

    Disney Channel premiered its first made-for-television live action film Luck Luck Ki Baat and is planning to air more such made-for-tv films in future.

    Pogo continued to treat its viewers with Chhota Bheem movies like Chhota Bheem aur Hanuman, Chhota Bheem: Dholakpur to Kathmandu, Chhota Bheem & the Curse of Damyaan, Chhota Bheem: Master of Shaolin and Chhota Bheem: Mayanagri.

    The channel also premiered its first live action movie Bhootraja Aur Ronnie followed by another one called ‘Chatpat Jhatpat’.

    “Earlier, kids used to consume five or six shows. Kids viewing habit has changed now as they are consuming one, two or three shows on a channel. Across channels you will find that two-three shows are driving viewership,” says Turner International India South Asia Director-Content Krishna Desai.

    According to Desai, kids also prefer humour content as opposed to action and adventure. “The thing with live action is that you are competing with 100 other channels which may not be targeted at kids but they still get watched. So if it’s a good live action show, they will watch it for a few times. But since they are kids channels, they thrive on repeats also,” Desai says.