KID_1012_DEMAND_EUR_1006_ELLENDER 9/24/12 9:10 AM Page 6
Screen shot: Kidobi has been signing deals with content owners around the world for its preschooler-focused video platform.
So how much online viewing do children actually do? Over in France, Gwenaëlle Le Cocguen, the digital director of Lagardère Active’s TV channels, which include the children’s services Gulli, Canal J,TiJi and the Santa Claus channel, reports that Gulli Replay generates around 6 million video views a month across all its platforms (IPTV, website and mobile apps). Sprout, meanwhile, claims 18 million views per month for on-demand, with an average of 5 million to 6 million video starts online. THE AGE GAP
Differences are also beginning to emerge in what children are viewing across the various platforms. Le Cocguen says that shows aimed at 6- to 12-year-olds are the most viewed online, whereas preschool content is more popular on IPTV. “The screen has a real impact on the way shows are watched,” she adds. “Computers are used more by children on their own, while access to the TV screen remains a parental prerogative.” Sprout’s Beecham adds, “For VOD, some of our most-viewed titles are programs that have been around a bit longer and are more well known. Online, some shows that are strong both onVOD and linear are also getting play on the site—Caillou and Thomas & Friends, for example—but other, newer titles like Justin Time and LazyTown are getting heavy sampling too.” As to what age children start to consume media, a study by pediatrician Dr. Dimitri Christakis of the University of Washington found that, by three months, 40 percent of babies are regular viewers of DVDs, video or television; by the time they are two, almost 90 percent are spending two to three hours a day in front of a screen. Another recent study, from the Kaiser Family Foundation, looking at the role of media in the lives of 8- to 18-year-olds, reveals that “over the past five years, young people have increased the amount of time they spend consuming media by 1:17 hours daily, from 6:21 to 7:38— almost the amount of time most adults spend at work each day.” This comes as no surprise to Leo Henning, the founder and CEO of the Toronto-based start-up Kidobi, an online preschool destination that creates tailor-made video playlists for children based on their age, interests and skills. “The age children begin to consume screen content is coming way down,” he says. “There are some scary statistics about babies, but we put the minimum age at two.” Kidobi was born of Henning’s own experience of attempting to find appropriate programming online for his daughter, who was having trouble with counting. What he imagined would be a 20-minute job took him over three hours of searching, previewing, evaluating and assembling. “I found it took me longer to program a half-hour playlist than it took for my daughter to watch it,” he says. The result was Kidobi, a collective of software developers, designers, researchers and child-development experts whose mission is “to make