How kids shows are boosting Paramount+

Every streaming service wants a grown-up hit like House of the Dragon. On Paramount+, though, courting the smallest viewers often has a bigger payoff.

Quote of the day: “When it comes to streaming, parents will go without eating before disconnecting something that entertains their kids,” Brian Robbins, president and CEO of Paramount Pictures and Nickelodeon, said Tuesday at the Bank of America Securities 2022 Media, Communications, and Entertainment Conference. “Kids content is an amazing, amazing retention tool for us.”

• Kids titles can help boost box-office results, drive sales of branded consumer products, and make streaming subscriptions stickier, said Robbins, who also serves as chief content officer of kids and family content at Paramount+.
• “A franchise like Paw Patrol is just like gold,” Robbins said. “You have the movie. The movie theatrically does well. The movie goes to streaming, it brings all those kids’ with [it]. And then we’re fortunate enough to have this huge kids’ library, including all the Paw Patrol titles to feed them.”
• Kids’ programming on streaming can also help fill the audience void as linear viewing continues to drop off. “If you take our linear share and the audience for kids that we’ve picked up on Paramount+, we actually have more audience and share of kids 2–11 than we’ve had in years when you combine them both,” Robbins said. (However, not all of those young viewers are monetized with ads; plus, ad loads on streaming are lower than on linear.)

Big picture: Paramount+, which last reported having more than 43 million paid subscribers, has been upfront about its dedication to bolstering franchises across its portfolio.

“Consumers want more of the things they love,” Robbins said. “They want to see the movie, watch the show, read the book, wear their pajamas, use the toothpaste, ride the ride.”

+1: But streaming services must handle the data of pint-sized viewers carefully, privacy experts recently told us.—KS