Kids’ Content and Entertainment Trends in the Post-pandemic World
Digital media trends for kids have been following a sustained growth pattern over the years. Though the entertainment media had already made a definitive mark in the linear TV space, it was the digital domain that needed catching up. The global pandemic has accelerated pre-existing media and entertainment trends and seen to it that this space has been captured effectively too.
With kids getting confined to their homes over the last 2 years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, their media consumption has grown considerably. Aside from entertainment content, kids have been increasingly focusing on video games too. Interestingly, this is a growing trend seen across all generations. Media entertainment companies stand to gain a lot from this trend with competition for a younger audience driving production. Another emerging trend is the need for creating localized content to feed kid’s hunger for excitement. This means more content choices for consumers and more competition for providers. Here is a look at some trends in kid’s media consumption post the pandemic:
Indigenous content
Global production houses have woken up to the need for creating locally-relevant animation content. International media houses have realized that dubbing international content doesn’t work and are now taking inspiration from local mythology, history, comic books and local TV shows. Since 2020, almost 8 out of 10 kid’s shows have homegrown stories with indigenous characters.
Local languages
Interestingly, the demand for multilingual kid’s digital content is on the rise. Though the kid’s entertainment media is dominated by global media giants such as Walt Disney, Sony, Warner Media, Discovery and Viacom, they are mainly dominating the linear TV space. However, they are gradually breaking into the digital domain as well. Many new entrants into the kid’s genre are introducing more local languages to enable them cater to regional markets as well.
Growth of OTTs
Apart from this, a growing affinity with digital media among children provides new opportunities for OTT players in the kid’s genre. Among the new exclusive kids OTTs launched during the lockdown are Peacock; Toonz Media Group’s MyToonz; aha Kids; Discovery+; Japan’s Kumarba, etc.
It’s an exciting future ahead as studios, networks and platforms compete to bring out world class content to keep the world’s kids positively engaged. Toonz Media Group is a leading global production studio specializing in kids and family entertainment. Toonz provides services in content creation, production, digital media exploitation, gaming, AR/VR and other upcoming media technologies.
Find more information here: https://toonz.co/