This year, for the first time, Content Tokyo observed the entry of Kids Station, one of the leading kids channel in Japan, and boy did they come with a motive. Having four IPs in their kitty which are running successfully on air, Kids Station finally decided to market their IPs at the content market to attract more eyeballs and spread their merchandising line.
“Being a kids content channel, though the the population of Japan is going down, just like what we are currently witnessing in China or Korea, parents spending money on their kids is going up. The money which is being generated by parents for their children is taking an upward sign and there’s no stopping to that. “
These are the words of Kids Station, COO and GM – IP business development, Takayuki Yamanaka as he goes on to assert that they are not pessimistic about the kids content market.
Speaking about their channel’s business, he says, “In order to make business for a paid channel like us, the watching time doesn’t matter as long as the family picks the channel. The criteria for us is how we maintain the subscribers and make new business apart from broadcasting shows. That’s why we started coming up with our own IPs and merchandising lines. One of the solution to stay in business is by widening our horizon and not limiting it to the broadcast space. Currently 15 to 20 per cent of the shows broadcasted on Kids Station are owned by us. So how can we broaden that possibility and sell TV programme to abroad? That’s our new challenge. This exhibition has been going on since more than five years, but it’s out first time here because we thought we are the broadcasting guys but we recently changed our approach and started concentrating more on own IP rather than the broadcasting content. “
The IPs owned by Kids Station are Cocomong (relatively new IP), Happy Clapping Time (seven to eight years old), Fruity Samurai (six years old) and Papan Ga Panda (four years old). Yamanaka goes on to mention that it becomes easier for them to strike a deal with a merchandiser or a possible collaborator with their own IP. How? Since the IPs are owned by them and one or two other companies, it becomes uncomplicated for them to meet the consensus as they can do whatever they want to with these characters.
“Foreign companies are really focusing on the Fruity Samurai whereas Japanese merchandising companies are interested in collaborating for Papan Ga Panda. Food manufactures on the other hand are more keen with Cocomong as the main and sub characters are made out of food; sausages and cucumber / carrots respectively. Other than that Happy Clapping Time is a mixture of animation and live action which means we do singing and dancing with kids so companies interested in events want to collaborate with that,” comments Yamanaka.
Just like the Indian market, in Japan as well, the preschool kids rule the kids market as Happy Clapping Time is the most watched show on Kids Station. What makes Kids Station a bit different from the leading kids channel NHK-ETV is the fact that they are shifting their content more towards entertainment as the latter focuses more on edutainment / education. Being a paid channel, Kids Station has about 8 million subscribers which might be a quarter or 20 per cent of the free channel subscribers.
They key time for the channel is 7:30 in the morning and it targets one hour as Happy Clapping Time with mixture of short content as the attention span of kids is limited. So the channel combines a lot of fun and entertainment content in this one hour and repeats the same thing at 9:30 am. “Our target is from 7:30 am to 8:30 am as this one hour can be concentrated on elementary kids and once they go to school, it’s time for mom and preschool kids which means that we get to repeat the same content from 9:30 am to 10:30 am.”
The IPs owned by Kids Station are telecasted only during the morning time and Saturdays and Sundays. The age group from 0 to 6 watch the TV the most (Happy Clapping Time) and next to that is 7 to 9 year group(Yo-kai Watch) whereas beyond 10 years old kids, they like animation linked to boy toys. About 60 per cent of subscribers of Kids Station are boys and the remaining 40 per cent being girls.
In late 2014, the channel ventured into the digital media space with YouTube and recently a few months back came up with their own smartphone app. “We came across an interesting observation. We used to think that the main time for kids to watch shows was morning, however what happened was we observed that for these singing and dancing shows, the subscribed time was night time. It was highly possible that the mom was showing kids these shows while they were off to sleep and this was totally unexpected. What we deduced from it was, maybe with the big screen, the core time would be in the morning wherein all the family members are coming in and looking at it together. But after that, they use smartphone app to see it in other rooms or different time of day”, an excited Yamanaka exclaimed.
Currently on the smartphone app, Happy Clapping Time is being viewed the most. The app showcases the content owned by the channel and since it’s a paid app, no advertisements can be seen. So far it has 600 to 700 subscribers. The channel is targeting 10,000 to 20,000 in one year.
“Right now YouTube is being watched more as it’s for free. So if a series has 20 to 30 episodes, we just upload three to four episodes and if one wants to watch more then we just guide them to the contract.”
How different is the content on the app from TV? “A typical kind of animation is 15 to 30 minutes per episode. But we understand, we can’t do the same with app as the content is being watched on a smaller screen. So, for the app, maximum three or five minutes of content can be seen, whereas for TV programme we target a 30 minutes programme or an animation movie which is more like 90 minutes or more.”
There are about 55 personnel employed at Kids Station and as for the animators, the channel has partnership with about 10 to 20 companies.