First, the unhealthy information. A session serving to to launch an prolonged MipJunior on Friday afternoon, underscored simply how exhausting the children TV enterprise is struggling.
Prefacing a panel dialogue on the State of the Kids Entertainment Industry, Challenges & Opportunities, Ampere Analysis’ Cyrine Amor urged international children TV commissions had been down 48% by means of August 2023.
That’s a radically extra important lower than the 11% decline in commissioning seen throughout all genres for a similar interval.
U.S. SVOD companies and pay TV channels are chopping again most sharply, she mentioned. In the U.S. market, public broadcaster commissions of children packages had been down 8% by means of August. Pay TV commissions, in distinction, had dived 53%, SVOD orders by 33%.
“There are numerous components, together with inflation,” she mentioned.
Western Europe can be seeing declines, particularly in public service broadcaster’s commissioning of children TV content material. That determine is down 19% % by means of August.
This stress is making Western platforms undertake tendencies already seen within the U.S. corresponding to of relying extra on IPs to develop properties.
While nearly all of children content material in Western Europe is discovered on SVOD, during the last 12 months, children packages which are the most well-liked had been obtainable throughout all platforms. Non-exclusivity can repay for these wanting to remain fashionable after launch, Amor argued.
Moderator Deirdre Brennan, COO at Wildbrain, adopted on the presentation grilling panelists Keith Chapman, creator of Kids IP, Keith Chapman Productions; Olivier Lelardoux, CEO of France’s Blue Spirit Studio), and Sarah Dewitt, senior VP & General Manager, PBS Kids).
Topics beneath dialogue included modifications within the business during the last decade, instanced by the rise of digital and gaming, viewers fragmentation, and the emergence of disruptive applied sciences corresponding to AI.
The largest subject was expertise. “10 years in the past, expertise in studios was bettering what you already do. Now it has a a lot larger impression,” mentioned Lelardoux. “It’s the primary time in animation that expertise not solely disrupts animation however comes with a bundle of gaming.”
Technology has opened the enjoying subject for experimentation.
“It’s time to try to fail,” he mentioned. “It’s a brand new world, however we’re all misplaced right here. Of course you’ll fail nevertheless it’s O.Okay.. Little failures can result in a giant win.”
Meeting the viewers, as an alternative of following them, was one other subject.
Said Dewitt: “We are all the time interested by how expertise permits us to search out our viewers. Coming out of the pandemic, children and households like doing issues collectively. What can they watch collectively?”
Technology enhances studying, she mentioned “Kids study extra, once they have a dialog with a personality that breaks the fourth wall, and asks the children a query. Responses are written by our script writers,” she mentioned. “Kids who’re partaking like which are coming away with higher studying.”
All platforms should not equal. “Kids have completely different expectations for various platforms,” she mentioned. “You can’t put the identical product in every single place and anticipate them to reply. They do various things on completely different platforms.”
Added Chapman: Young entrepreneurs use expertise in new methods.”
When requested the place he finds inspiration, he mentioned: “Having kids helps. Watching them develop up in entrance of you makes you an skilled in youngster conduct. I search for gaps and look to the long run and ask what will likely be related to a child in three to 5 years? Sometimes, concepts come out of nowhere. Reading. Talking. Observing children.”
For Amor, creating a cross-media content material model is the important thing to the long run.
MipJunior runs Oct. 13-15 in Cannes.
