Busy Beavers’ New Year’s resolution
Apopular Hamilton-based children’s YouTube channel is heading into the New Year with some big plans to grow.
David Martin started his YouTube channel We are Busy
Beavers in 2004, with the original aim of producing educational videos for kids to learn English as a second language.
Two years ago, there were 681,000 subscribers and the channel attracted about 1.7 million views a day.
Now, there were 2.3m subscribers and 2.1 billion views in total, with an audience that includes learners of English as a second language, children with learning disabilities and toddlers and preschoolers.
The next goal was to translate the current Busy Beavers catalogue of 50 songs into Spanish, French, Mandarin Chinese and Maori.
Martin also wanted to sell his content to television and other online streaming services next year, focusing on growing his New Zealand, Australian, American and Canadian audiences.
‘‘We want to take Busy Beavers from being a mostly YouTube brand and we want to move it into a lot of different avenues where people can reach us, whether it’s streaming app services or on traditional TV,’’ Martin said.
The Canadian expat and his team of three did all the creative work, song-writing, character development, story boarding and branding from their premises in Te Rapa, and they subcontracted work to an animation company in Auckland.
They have licensing deals with global plush toy maker Gund, which makes toys of the Busy Beaver characters, Billy and Betty. Those toys and DVDs of Busy Beaver episodes are sold on Amazon.
It was the educational element that set Busy Beavers apart from other YouTube channels targeting kids, Martin said.
‘‘Fundamentally what we create are educational learning resources for children to access on the internet. That’s the difference between what we do and what the kids space on YouTube has turned into, which is a lot of playing with toys or opening Easter eggs.’’