Netflix borrows children's show from YouTube

PanARMENIAN.Net - Not every Netflix content pickup is a big-budget original series: the world’s biggest subscription-streaming service has licensed kids’ content originally produced for YouTube, adding more ad-free virtual-babysitting content for the preschool set, Variety said.

The subscription VOD provider on Oct. 1 launched a compilation of nursery-school rhymes from multiplatform network operator BroadbandTV, under a multiyear licensing deal. The 46-minute “HooplaKidz” compilation on Netflix is available to subscribers in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

The video features the Annie, Ben and Mango characters from HooplaKidz’s YouTube series “The Adventures of Annie & Ben,” which BroadbandTV first launched a year ago. Featuring such toddler classics as “Wheels on the Bus,” “Old MacDonald Had a Farm,” “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” and “Hey Diddle Diddle,” it’s the type of fare that has proven enormously popular on YouTube among parents with young children.

Netflix also licenses sing-along nursery school programs from Baby Genius and Sockeye Media’s Mother Goose Club.

For BroadbandTV, the licensing deal is its first partnership with Netflix. Down the road, BBTV hopes to license additional HooplaKidz content to the SVOD provider as well as develop original series based on its intellectual property for Netflix, according to BroadbandTV founder and CEO Shahrzad Rafati.

“Netflix is highly focused on kids and family verticals,” Rafati said. “This is really the beginning of the relationship, for us to provide more licensed content and develop original shows for Netflix.”

Vancouver-based BBTV, which is majority owned by RTL Group, has also secured distribution deals for HooplaKidz content with Toca Boca, Voot, Tata Sky, Pluto TV and Amazon Channels partner program.