Disney joins new race for kids’ TV

Company to drop Netflix and launch its own streaming service

As adult television viewers increasingly opt out of traditional cable, streaming services are focussing on children and familyfriendly programming has been dubbed the “front line in the streaming battle”.

Disney plans to pull its children’s programming from Netflix in 2019 to launch its own streaming service.

The Disney streaming service will feature sequels to blockbuster children’s films, including Toy Story 4, Frozen 2 and The Lion King.

It will also offer original programming aimed at younger audiences. The move could fill a hole streaming services spent the past few years scrambling to fill — a lack of high-quality, family-friendly programming.

Over the years, networks and streaming services such as HBO, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Hulu often created shows for adults, many of which showed graphic scenes of sex, nudity and violence. These shows left children wanting, so in the second decade of the 2000s, the companies turned their eyes to children’s programming.

Even so, the other companies have always been playing catch-up to Disney.

Research firm eMarketer found that digital video consumption among children 11 and under in the United States is expected to jump to 74 per cent in 2019 from 68 per cent in 2013, the Los Angeles Times reported.

It added: “At stake will be millions of dollars in subscription fees for streaming services that have the best offerings.”

If so, Disney’s new service will launch when there are more young viewers using streaming services than ever before.

That shift from traditional television to streaming services among children already appears to be occurring. As the New York Times reported, Nielsen found children between 2 and 11 watched two fewer hours of live television in 2016 than they did in 2015.

Disney television has been hit hard, which may have provided motivation for creating a streaming service. The Disney Channel suffered a 28 per cent drop in liveplus-seven-day prime time United States viewers during the 2016 to 2017 season, according to Quartz.

The streaming giants are also attracted to young viewers because children watch television differently than adults. Kids are “natural bingewatchers, prone to viewing the same episode over and over”, the Los Angeles Times reported, and they aren’t as beholden to traditional storytelling.

“What’s great about streaming services is kids aren’t tied to the linear broadcast,” Tara Sorensen, head of the kid’s content division at Amazon Studios told the Los Angeles Times. “We can encourage them to stop shows or rewind.”

To that end, Netflix began offering limited children’s content in 2011, the Los Angeles Times reported. Twenty per cent of its content was for young viewers by 2014, according to data from analyst firm SNL Kagan.

This pivot proved successful. Erik Barmack, Netflix’s vice-president of global independent content, told the Los Angeles Times that in 2015 half of its US subscribers watched children’s content each week.

Playing catch-up, HBO made a five-year deal with Sesame Workshop in 2015 to exclusively air first-run episodes of Sesame Street.

The next year, Amazon Prime Video cut a deal with PBS to exclusively stream most of the broadcaster’s children’s shows in what the New York Times called its “latest move in a battle among the streaming giants, along with HBO, to acquire or create as many children’s television shows as possible”.

Disney, though, won’t need to catch up. It has a deep bench of movies and television shows aimed at young viewers.

Numbers aside, there anecdotally seems to be a hunger for a streaming service focused primarily on familyfriendly fare. Throw a stone at any parenting blog, and you’re sure to hit a post with a title like “Children and streaming don’t always mix”.

“It’s not like network TV anymore, where you can put on Cartoon Network and know you’re safe,” Common Sense Media parenting editor Caroline Knorr told the Deseret News. “Watch with your kids when you can and check out what’s recently watched on Netflix. If you have a DVR, record shows you’re okay with and let your kids watch those.” But the Disney streaming service could well be the answer to these cries — no workarounds needed. It would be the first major streaming service directed at children.

It’s unclear how much Disney’s announcement will affect the other services in the long run. But afterwards, Netflix shares dropped nearly 5 per cent, before slightly rebounding.