Mobile phones and the internet are seen as the new thrust areas by children’s entertainment companies
Nick India’s website saw close to 600,000 page views in May this year. Arnab Desai, an 11-year-old Mumbai resident, was one of the visitors. Arnab, who is allowed to surf the internet for 1 hour every day, makes it a point to visit www.nickindia.com and play games based on his favourite cartoon characters like SpongeBob SquarePants and Ninja Hattori.
The rise in the number of kids turning to TV channels’ websites to find their favourite characters is not lost on entertainment companies like Nick India, Disney and Turner. Nick India, for instance, is planning to introduce multiplatform games to encourage dual playing on its portal. Acknowledging the trend, Nina Jaipuria, VP and GM of Nick India, says, “Online gaming is by far the most popular section on our website. We will soon launch a platform that will allow kids to play against their friends in a game.” Disney’s website, which registered about 10 million page views during summer vacations, is also building an exclusive online portfolio around its popular programmes like Hannah Montana and Kya Mast Hai Life, a locally produced series.
The digital renaissance is coming just in time as television executives had started to sweat about declining audience and the increase in the number of children turning to the internet for their entertainment.
Mobile phones and the internet are seen as the new thrust areas by children’s entertainment companies, which are always looking to create ‘additional revenue-generating streams’, besides the traditional merchandise sales. Nick, Turner and Disney are aggressively putting together interactive websites that will be an extension of their channel’s on-air shows and can engage the young audience for a longer period.
Already, sites like www.pogo.tv, owned by Turner, have remodelled to showcase features such as video-on-demand, blogs, message boards, gaming and mini-sites of popular shows. The result: The website boasts of attracting over 99,000 visitors per month, with each spending an average 21 minutes.
The solar eclipse, which will occur on July 22, will also be used by Nick India to draw more audience online. Kids are being encouraged to enrol on the website and Nick India will send the registered users a special goggle to view the solar eclipse, free of cost. Nick India, as Jaipuria informs, has 72 games online at any given time and adds 2 new games every week.
Not too far behind is Disney Channel (India), which is overhauling its online platform and is contemplating additional exclusive content on its website instead of just making it an extension of its on-air shows. According to Venugopal Iyengar, associate director (marketing) of Walt Disney Television: “Disney will introduce ‘behind the scenes’ for some of its shows and also a ‘know the stars’ section so that kids can get to know their favourite TV characters.” Disney fans will also get to sample special games built around its popular shows. The Hungama channel, one of the Disney properties, has begun with offering users the chance to adorn an online ‘avatar’ while they play games on the website.
Turner, which owns the popular Cartoon Network channel, is planning to introduce gaming platforms on mobile phones in the not-too-distant future. Monica Tata, VP & deputy GM (entertainment networks), South Asia, Turner International India, reveals that the channel is exploring options to make its content available on the mobile phone. “The idea is to use emerging media as another touch-point for children. Also, it will help us work out a package for advertisers wherein they can advertise simultaneously on television as well on the website.” Turner's www.cartoonnetworkindia.com attracts over 400,000 visitors and, on an average, the visitor spends about 30 minutes on the website.
Nick India too, along with telecom service providers, has introduced a downloadable pack of games, wallpapers, music, ringtones, etc for a monthly fee of Rs 30. Although downloads from Nick's website are free of cost as of now, mobile downloads will come at a cost of around Rs 30 per month, depending on the offerings and service provider.
TV channel executives admit the online world is fast becoming a great place for fresh TV properties to gain exposure and build up its audience ratings. For now, the PC connected to the internet is proving to be a far more robust platform to kid's entertainment channels than mobile phones.
