MUMBAI: The kids channels have finally woken up to the importance of animation in regional languages.
Tamil, Telugu, Bengali and Malayalam are the existing languages that are working quite well in the overall industry as well as in the kids segment. Keeping in mind the parents’ concerns for their kids to learn and grow, the broadcasters thought of launching English feeds as well. Recently, Sony Yay made its footprint in the English space and now, Discovery Kids has also added this feed in its bouquet.
Discovery Kids was launched in 2012 and has already Tamil, Telugu and Hindi audio feeds that helped the channel to leap-frog to fourth rank in the existing cluttered market from ninth rank in the beginning of the year riding on 426 per cent growth in TV ratings. Discovery Kids head Uttam Pal Singh said, “Our channel’s reach has doubled from 9 million in week 1 to 18 million in this week (33) as per the BARC data.
He said that since the regional languages are important in the industry, Discovery launched those before entering the English segment. “For Discovery Kids it’s almost like a clean slate when we started it out with the launch of Bandhbuk aur Budbak and Little Singham. So first was definitely getting Tamil on board and as and when we added these regional languages, we got good response,” he said.
The next step is to get maximum reach in the SAARC countries. “The addition of Telugu feed in April earlier this year helped increase our reach by over 50 per cent in the state of Andhra Pradesh/Telangana. We expect that the English feed will help us penetrate deeper in select pockets in India as well as SAARC countries,” he added.
The mobile game of Little Singham hit the No. 1 spot in the Arcade section by garnering 3 million downloads within the first two weeks of its launch.
The network claims to have a daily time spent of 82 minutes on the channel and has observed a significant hike in the ratings due to its programming on the occasions of Friendship Day and 15 August. “We released special content on Desh ka Sipahi Little Singham and focused on Bandhbuk and Budbak on Friendship Day. We gained 9 GRPs in the last week and now as far as the channel’s reach is concerned, we want to reach about 30-35 per cent.”
As per the BARC data’s week 33, Nickelodeon stands at the first position with 135622 impressions (000s) sum. Disney Channel, Hungama, Discovery Kids and Pogo TV stood at second, third, fourth and fifth positions respectively with 125920 impressions (000s) sum, 110826 impressions (000s) sum, 81728 impressions (000s) sum and 78145 impressions (000s) sum.
