TV Kids Summer Festival Preview

While it’s not advice parents would necessarily offer their kids, the consensus I’ve been hearing from folks in the kids’ media business is that it’s time to break some of the rules.

There are no easy solutions for where the business finds itself. Deflated from the sudden decrease in SVOD investment, kids’ media producers must find new ways to get their shows off the ground. Securing an audience has never been harder amid fragmented platforms and an untenable sea of content. And big-budget, beautifully animated shows often lose audiences to properties made on shoestring budgets in the creator economy. Curating the latest edition of the TV Kids Summer Festival, we set out to grapple with these game-changing developments to see if we could find some consensus on the way forward.

Not yet registered? There’s still time to do so here; only those registered will receive access to our exclusive white paper at the end of the event, recapping everything you need to know in a handy PDF you can refer to whenever you need to. And you’ll want to hold on to some of this intelligence in the months ahead.

As always, we turned to those curating platforms for kids to come to grips with content needs. Louise Bucknole kicks things off Tuesday morning with an in-depth look at Milkshake!, followed by a keynote conversation with CBC Kids’ Marie McCann as we spotlight the crucial role of pubcasters. Both are rising to the challenge of serving audiences wherever they are, as is Nickelodeon, which recently rolled out its first original series specifically for YouTube: Kid Cowboy. To learn more about that show and how the global kids’ platform is tapping into opportunities on YouTube, we’ve enlisted the expertise of Ashley Kaplan, executive VP of unscripted and digital franchise studio. We end the day with the founder and CEO of a company that has built its business on understanding the dynamics of YouTube content and bringing that out into the broader ecosystem: pocket.watch’s Chris M. Williams.

The Wednesday schedule kicks off with an exploration of getting live-action tween series off the ground, convening ZDF Studios’ Oliver Grundel, ZDF’s Nicole Keeb and Cottonwood Media and Federation Kids & Family’s David Michel to talk about the crucial role of collaboration in this space. Collaboration is also a theme of our Creative Spirit session, which looks at how two purveyors of high-quality fare in the U.K. are meeting the needs of a business in transition: Magic Light Pictures’ Martin Pope and BBC Studios Kids & Family’s Grainne McNamara. Amy Takahara will be up next, offering up intelligence from a long career in kids’ media—most recently at Netflix—on the way forward and highlighting the opportunities she’s pursuing at her consultancy, Sigma Girl Media. Capping off the day is a session with Gino Guzzardo, the VP of multiplatform content at Disney Branded Television, who is bringing beloved and new characters alike to a diverse array of short-form content that is being showcased across the company’s many touchpoints.

We’ve convened a superpanel of boutique producer-distributors on Thursday morning to hear about how independents are navigating the pain points in the business, hearing from Dandelooo’s Emmanuèle Pétry, Serious Kids’ Genevieve Dexter, MIAM! animation’s Hanna Mouchez and Tulipop Studios’ Helga Árnadóttir. Next up, we turned to independent media consultant Emily Horgan for our session on online-led content deployments, offering up two very different perspectives: 9 Story Media Group’s Elianne Friend and digital-native outfit TheSoul Publishing’s Francesco Miceli. Dubit will bring its market intelligence to the TV Kids Summer Festival with our closing session. CEO Ian Douthwaite and team members Laura Dudley-Gough and Benjamin Sumner reveal new research on kids’ media habits and tips for how IP owners can explore opportunities in gaming.

Across the sessions, our goal was to deliver the intelligence you need to understand where the business is headed. No one has figured it all out yet (well, maybe Bluey has), but the conversations we’ve had amid the turmoil remain upbeat and hopeful. This community is no stranger to creative problem-solving, a theme that resonates across all of next week’s sessions. You can see the full schedule here.

Enjoy the show!