Kidscreen Summit 2022 is a good opportunity to develop new 1st and 2nd tier ventures in kids & teens segment, including both production and distribution. What can we say about the media game? Free TV, Pay TV, OTTs, AVOD and so on?
As we’ve been watching at MIPTV and LA Screenings, the global content market is polarizing between free TV broadcasters, which want to handle own OTTs, and the OTT platforms, which launch AVOD and FAST systems which are a non-linear free TV, wishing free TV advertisement budgets. Now it is difficult to see Pay TV referents, who were the top buyers of content some years ago.
Is this bad for kids & teens segment? If we imagine that Pay TV has been for years the perfect place for these targets, we can say yes. But in fact, kids & teens is present in all media, and the evolution includes them where the market goes.
Nowadays, the Pay TV players are a second tier of free TV or digital platforms. The all-together evolution converges to AVOD, in one sense, because it is a digital free TV. But we’ll continue watching alive all current media. No media will disappear. To stress this picture, this is a great moment of theatrical releases, with millionaire box offices that give them back priority in both producers and distributors.
Is the future back? In many senses, yes, while the market continues moving forward. Jens Ritcher, CEO, Fremantle International (UK): ‘How has production/formats business changed after the pandemic? Now everything must be mainstream, to call the attention in big. The costs are upper and upper, you can’t reduce quality in any market segment. And now the content can be made for many different audiences: free TV, OTT, niches, young people’.
As a brief, today anything can be made per inertia, but there are many things to do at every step, worldwide. And in the new content bowl, Kids & teens is stronger than ever to call the attention and investments. Move forward being creative.
Nicolás Smirnoff
