The public broadcaster ABC Australia, among its verticals is offering entertaining, educational and inspiring content to the more than 4.4 million Australian children between two and 14 through a mixed genre like drama, comedy, preschool and factual.
The company has two channels dedicated to this segment of the audience: ABC Kids, with content for children ages 2 to 8, and ABC Me, the brand for children in primary schools, which follows them until the stage of adolescence. In addition, among their offer, they also have an application for both channels, and their iView streaming service, in addition to their digital contacts on YouTube, Facebook and TikTok.
Libbie Doherty, head of children’s content, is who leads both programmatic strategies and content purchasing. ‘The Australian market is very specific, but we also have a special position because we are the only player with a relevant offer designed for the children’s community in the country’, stressed.
One of the company’s most important shows is Bluey, produced by Ludo Studio for the network. The program is the most watched in Australia on Free-To-Air with unprecedented records for an animated series, such as the final episode of its second season, which tracked just over 600 thousand viewers, and was also the most watched content in the ABC streaming service, generating both seasons more than 480 million views.
‘It is a very careful show that represents what we want to transmit to children who watch ABC, good citizenship habits, diverse racial and sexual representation and enormous values such as love and redemption’. The executive especially highlighted the internal work of the broadcaster together with the responsible studio, who helped ‘make every penny worth’ of the project.
One of the great strengths of ABC Kids is its powerful acquisition area, with great partners such as Disney and BBC Kids/Studios, who in addition to providing them with content, broadcast their originals, as they did with Bluey.
The executive was emphatic about taking care of the content, since she believes that it is ‘difficult to compete’ with streaming services. ‘We are a public channel, because our budget flow is smaller, however we try to be relevant in all media to accompany our audience at every stage of their life until they reach the age of 18’.
One of these programs for pre-teens is the video game review programme, Good Game: Spawn Point, a spin-off of the original Good Game that only carries reviews of games ACB-rated as G or PG, and professions to be «For young gamers, by gamers». It debuted on ABC Me on February 20, 2010, and became one of the highest rated show broadcast on the channel.
The company also remains relevant with disruptive offers, Doherty announced that due the adoption of audio formats in Australia is quite high among children’s audiences, they plan to launch an add-on for smart headphones through their Kids Listen platform. ‘It’s going to be a new frontier, something that cannot be discovered when there is no screen and it has to be done through audio. So there have been a lot of challenges, a lot of learning and we are very excited about the audience and iterating the best ways to do it over the next 12 months’.
