Radio / Television News

Prime Time: How Netflix and YouTube could spell the death of mid-budget kids programming

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OTTAWA – As talk of Canadian broadcasters battling Netflix and needing online scale dominated last week’s Prime Time conference, spare a thought for kids TV producers also struggling to reach audiences on tablets, smartphones and TV Everywhere.

It turns out a combination of streaming VOD services buying up high end kids fare to entice new subscribers and reduce churn, and the global explosion of YouTube and user-generated content is putting the squeeze on kids content creators.

"The trend is the middle is going away. You're either producing something very high cost, industrial, or entering the space by doing something low cost for YouTube. They're different pieces of content," Vince Commisso, president and CEO of 9 Story Media Group, told a panel on the kids TV industry in Ottawa on Friday.

"But the middle, where traditionally this business was, that's the part under pressure," he added.

It's not just dollars and cents portending the possible death of mid-budget kids programming. It's about how kids consume video content – which is very different to how their parents and other adults do so – and how successful content breaks through a cluttered market to be guaranteed a berth on major broadcast and SVOD platforms.

Agnes Augustin, president and CEO of the Shaw Rocket Fund, which invests in Canadian kids and youth content for traditional broadcast and digital platforms, also pointed to the growing contrasts in real estate between YouTube and its wealthier SVOD cousins like Netflix.

"The expectation of high quality production is still there and those budgets are definitely going up," Augustin said. On the digital front, however, where budget levels are far lower, animation can't be done on the cheap, so it's mostly DIY live action, and mostly for YouTube.

"We are seeing a variety there, we're also seeing a lot of innovation in financing, especially when we work with American partners. The last two episodes financed are for those extra video pieces they (producers) need to put content online and go out ahead of time to find your audience," Augustin said.

"And then maybe put the clips back together to create another episode," she added.

John Gisby, managing director of DHX Media’s animation studio Wildbrain, told the panel that kids, as early adopters of new technology, predictably prefer to watch video online, rather via the living room TV set, according to a recent report from the British regulator Ofcom.

"Which is why it's no surprise that if you take eight to 15 year-olds the majority (or 49%) would prefer to watch YouTube than TV. Only 14% would prefer to watch TV,” he said.

9 Story's Commisso also pointed to sharply different day and night time viewing patterns for kids, compared to adults who prize primetime TV viewing at night, after a day at work. "Kids have multiple prime times," he added, as they tend to use tablets in the morning, smartphones during the day, and stream content during evening hours.

David Kleeman, senior vice president of Dubit, a research consultancy and digital studio. Insisted young boys tend to “man cave” in the evenings. "They've been on someone else's schedule the rest of the day, and go off with the tablet to delve deep into what they're passionate about," he observed.

With the bottom falling out of the mid-budget kids TV space, programmers are radically changing how they measure audiences, not only in linear TV, but online as well. "We measure our viewership across a number of platforms, Marie McCann, senior director of children's content at CBC Kids, explained.

Here engagement plays a big part as programmers measure whether young people favour channels they subscribe to, especially on YouTube, view content to completion, and returns to branded channels to view refreshed content.

The good news, according to 9 Story's Commisso, is kids are loyal TV viewers. "When they find content they like, they'll go anywhere to find it," he told the panel.

And kids are serial TV viewers all the time, unlike adults who binge when they have spare time, or on weekends and holidays.

"Kids do it all the time," Commisso said.