Entertainment - India;Kids’ genre has a new player – Spacetoon TV

Kids Media India, a subsidiary of Dubai-based Spacetoon Media Group, launched its first free-to-air kids edutainment Hindi channel, Spacetoon Kids TV, in India on January 14. The channel will be marketed through numerous on-ground activities. The channel would be available in other languages later on.

Spacetoon TV is based on a ten-planet programming concept, creating a perfect blend of education plus entertainment that covers a spectrum of children’s interests, ranging from pre-school to teens. Every hour of the day is dedicated to a planet according to viewing patterns of the age group and the kids can have ‘Appointment Viewing’ with their favourite content in the respective planet. These ten-planet programming line-up include Action Planet, Zomorroda Planet (Girls’ planet), Comedy Planet, Bon Bon Planet (Baby planet), Adventures Planet, Alphabet Planet, History Planet, Science Planet, Movies Planet and Sports Planet.

Spacetoon TV claims to own one of the world’s largest animated content libraries with a mix of historical and contemporary animation figures.

Spacetoon Media Group has already acquired a library of 4,200 episodes from various producers and studios throughout Europe, Asia and North America, and will also be looking at creating an hour of localised content produced in India.

Speaking on the launch, Rajiv Sangari, MD and CEO, Kids Media India, said, “With the launch of Spacetoon Kids TV in India, we aim to bring a distinctiveness with our unique proposition of providing edutainment for our Indian viewers. Though we are the 9th entrant in the market, we are confident that it will be well accepted by the audience and will create a niche in the world of kids’ entertainment. India is one of the largest children markets, which has a huge growth potential for Spacetoon products and services. We look forward to some exciting times ahead.”

Elaborating on the marketing initiative, Sangari said, “The channel would be supported by a lot of on-ground activities. This is an absolute effective way to reach out to kids. The process of reaching kids has been already commenced. We are targeting 3,000 schools where we will go and educate kids about the channel.”

He further said, “The channel is now available in Hindi, but over the period of time it would be available in other languages as well. The channel will be free-to-air for nearly three years. The target is to create demand and not push by purchase, to reach about 15 million homes by mid-2009 and to acquire 10 per cent share in the viewership by the end of 2010.”

On the content strategy, Sangari said, “90 per cent of the content would be sourced internationally, while 10 per cent would comprise local content of animated and live action. Local animation content will essentially be on the folk tales of India and the SAARC region. Live action will have exciting formats like involving kids from all schools for sports and cultural competitions and sponsoring all India drawing competitions, among other things.”