In a recent Kidscreen online exclusive, HBO president of programming Michael Lombardo said, “We have been discussing the children’s area more and more recently, especially in light of our expansion into streaming platforms with HBO GO and HBO NOW.
“Children’s programming plays very well on those types of services. So, when Jeffrey Dunn began talking to us about Sesame Street, it didn’t take us very long to realize that it was a perfect fit.”
As to whether or not HBO will increase its investment in kids content, Lombardo contends that the network will be very selective if it chooses to pursue children’s programming and is in no hurry to grow a large library.
However, recent reports examining churn rates for SVOD services may explain why it could be in HBO’s best interest to keep up with the Netflixes and the Amazons of the world when it comes to kids content. According to the OTT Video Market Tracker from US research firm Parks Associates, cancellation rates are very high for OTTs compared to cable networks. Approximately 4% of US broadband homes have discontinued their Netflix subscription in the last year, accounting for almost 9% of the SVOD’s subscriber base. And Hulu’s 7% churn rate for its Hulu Plus service over the past year represents a whopping 50% of its subscriber base.
From the article "Windows of opportunity in an SVOD world?" by Jeremy Dickson.
Overall globally, Parks calculates that there are more than 265 million households worldwide and that there will be more than 400 million OTT video service subscriptions by 2022. While Netflix, Amazon...
Amazon's servers were down for a large part of the morning on the day the outage occurred, taking Alexa-powered devices out of commission. Incidents like this may occur more often as the popularity of...
Robot vacuum cleaners represent a thin market sliver, according to Parks Associates. They can be found in just 5-6 percent of broadband households. "It's not a breakout product, but it's far and ah...
It also hopes to bring new consumers into the market. The US smart home market has long been plagued by slow growth, largely due to device and platform fragmentation and high prices. However, consumer...