New Delhi: JioCinema, the video streaming platform owned by Reliance Industries Ltd., has announced its venture into kids entertainment with a dedicated ‘Kids and Family’ offering spanning over 3,000 hours of content that will cater to young audiences - tiny tots, kids, pre-teens - and also serve the entire family, the company said.
The catalogue will include 300 plus series and movies spanning DIY, comedy, adventure, and action genres, in over five Indian languages. Kids’ network content from Viacom18 including Motu Patlu, Shiva, Rudra, Chikoo aur Bunty, Pinaki and the Bhoot Bandhus, The Twisted Timelines of Sammy & Raj, Kanha – Morpankh Samrat, among others, will be available on the platform along with global series such as Harry Potter, Transformers, HBO Storybook musical, The Looney Tunes Show, Super Mario Bros, Justice League War World, Garfield, Tin Tin, Trollstopia, Zig & Shark, Peppa Pig, Pokémon, and movies like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar, Teen Titans Go, Polar Express, Lego Ninjago, The Flintstones, Boss Baby, and others.
Through strategic partnerships with local and global studios including Cartoon Network Studios, Dreamworks, EOne, The Pokémon Company & Animaccord, among others, the offering will add fresh content every week.
Further, the service will include a ‘Kids and Family’ profile in every account, granting children access to only age- appropriate content. Such a profile will be combined with a unique ‘PIN’ based ‘Parental Control’ mechanism to allow parents to customize content access based on their child’s life stage.
“We are invested in understanding Indian audiences and their preferences and continue to evolve as the preferred source for all their entertainment needs. Our newly added Kids and Family category will unlock access to millions of families across India and enrich family consumption. With the best content from India and around the world, available in multiple languages, we aim to be inclusive and an enabler of wider consumption with fewer barriers,” a JioCinema spokesperson said.
According to media industry experts, during the pandemic, viewership of kids’ content doubled across TV and OTT platforms, and has stabilized now. However, the overall spike for digital platforms is led by other genres, and they are focusing on programming that caters to young adults, primarily in the 16-35 age group, so OTT services are not particularly interested in commissioning original kids’ content right now. That said, Telugu and Tamil streaming service aha Video has introduced a sub-brand dedicated to children, while Netflix also streams some shows.
Meanwhile, Amazon Prime Video and British company BBC Studios have announced that BBC Player and BBC Kids will be available as a value-added channel on the streamer’s platform.
