GUY BISSON
02/01/2018 - GUY BISSON
Quality street: kids' TV content on UK SVoD


The UK government has this week promised to pump £60m into kids' TV production and distribution to boost original content and diversity in the genre. The fund will allow producers to claim up to 50% of the production and distribution budget for new content. Designed to allow commercial broadcasters to compete with the BBC, the fund will also apply to shows produced for SVoD. Ampere has previously highlighted the importance of kids' content to SVoD platforms as a competitive differentiator; as well as the increasing focus among SVoD platforms on producing original kids content. Using the Ampere quality rating, we've looked at the top-100 rated 'children & family' TV shows currently available on UK SVoD platforms to see which producers are winning in the kids' TV quality stakes. It's not too surprising that Disney comes out top for producing quality kids' TV, although there is a bias towards Disney in the analysis caused by the presence of the Disney Life SVoD platform as one of the four analysed. Turner's Nickelodeon, the other 'kids' major' puts in a good showing with 16 shows in the top 100 UK-rated. The BBC is the third most highly-rated producer, with animated series Hey Duggee, teen drama Wolfblood, factual Horrible Histories and older The Story of Tracy Beaker rating well. US public service broadcaster PBS also rates highly with shows like Wild Kratts, Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood and The Magic School Bus. Interestingly, only a handful of Netflix and Amazon originals make it into the top 100-rated, with Dreamworks-produced Dinotrux and mga Entertainment's Project Mc2 on Netflix and Amazon's own Sigmund and the Seas Monsters, notable exceptions. With spending on kids' TV by the public service broadcasters falling 26% over the last decade, the SVoD platforms have gone some way to redress the balance. Between them, the UK SVoD platforms offer 6,440 hours of kids' ('children & family') content (up 17%—excluding Disney Life—since the beginning of 2017).

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