Viacom to Launch Customized Kids’ TV Channel; My Nickelodeon Junior to Combine Elements of Streaming Services Pandora and Netflix

Viacom to Launch Customized Kids’ TV Channel

My Nickelodeon Junior to Combine Elements of Streaming Services Pandora and Netflix

AMOL SHARMA

Jan. 14, 2014 7:41 p.m. ET

Viacom Inc. VIAB +0.25% plans to launch a children’s TV channel in the U.S. that can be programmed according to parents’ tastes and provide access to hundreds of old episodes of shows like “Dora the Explorer,” in a novel TV-delivery approach that combines elements of streaming services Pandora and Netflix Inc. NFLX +0.34%The new “My Nickelodeon Junior” interactive channel will be available in coming months to customers of Verizon CommunicationsInc. VZ +0.11% ‘s FiOS TV service, and Viacom plans to roll it out to other U.S. pay-TV operators later, the companies say.

It will be adjacent in the TV menu to the main “Nick Jr.” channel that is home to “Dora,” “The Backyardigans,” “Bubble Guppies,” and other fare targeted at a preschool audience.

TV viewers have two basic options nowadays: They can watch a channel with programming scheduled by a TV network, or sift through on-demand services to find a show they like. The My Nick Jr. technology introduces a third way to deliver TV—giving each household a customized channel.

Parents will be able to personalize the content that airs on My Nick Jr. by indicating their relative preference for seven themes such as “word play,” “super-sonic science,” and “get creative.”

Based on those preferences, My Nick Jr. will choose content to air from hundreds of episodes in the Nick Jr. library.

Children can rate shows by clicking on smile or frown icons, and the service will tweak the programming lineup accordingly. Parents can get reports on what their children watch and can program the channel to shut off after a set period. There won’t be ads.

The new service highlights how media companies and pay-TV operators are trying to modernize TV viewing at a time when consumers want greater control over what they watch and services like Netflix and Amazon.com Inc.’s Prime Instant Video are offering compelling alternatives to cable television.

TV networks and pay-TV operators also are developing sophisticated mobile-TV apps and beefing up video on-demand offerings.

Netflix and Amazon have become particularly popular as an outlet for children’s programming.

Terry Denson, Verizon’s vice president of content strategy and acquisition, said My Nick Jr. will help the company compete against these streaming-video services. He said other media companies and distributors could launch their own interactive channels.

“It’s a way you can quash the momentum of over-the-top players in the marketplace,” said Mr. Denson, referring to Web-based video options such as Netflix. “There’s no reason they should own that space—we should own that space.”

For Viacom, streaming outlets are customers—it licenses shows to them. But the company also wants to ensure that the pay-TV ecosystem—which provides the bulk of its revenue and profit through carriage fees and advertising—is healthy and technologically advanced.

Viacom hopes the new channel will help it negotiate higher carriage fees and give characters in its shows greater exposure, helping its consumer products licensing business.

One risk for the media company is that the new channel could draw viewers away from existing Nickelodeon channels. In the U.S., the flagship Nickelodeon network has a preschool programming block that averaged 570,000 viewers among children 2 to 5 years old in 2013.

Like Walt Disney Co. DIS +1.61% ‘s Disney Junior and Comcast Corp.’s Sprout, the Nick Jr. channel caters to a preschool audience and shows repeats of episodes aired in that block. Viacom said it gained confidence before the U.S. launch by testing the service in France, where it thought the stakes of failure would be lower.

“You haven’t seen that cannibalization effect” in France, said Bob Bakish, president and chief executive of Viacom International Media Networks. “Now it’s starting to roll out around the world.”

The interactive channel was a good fit for CanalSat, a unit of Vivendi SA, that was looking for ways to differentiate itself from the array of free over-the-air channels competing in France’s TV market. It fit nicely with CanalSat’s other efforts to personalize TV viewing, such as technology that recommends shows to viewers based on what they’ve previously viewed.

“The future of pay TV relies on personalization,” said Claire Basini, marketing director of CanalSat. “We were convinced of the potential” of Viacom’s service, she said.

Viacom could potentially extend the idea of a personalized channel to its other properties like MTV, executives said.

It is unclear how widely other companies will adopt the approach. One constraining factor: Many consumers still have set-top boxes hooked up to their TVs that can’t support interactive services like My Nick Jr.

Verizon and AT&T have the most advanced TV set-top boxes since they are the latest entrants in the market. Eventually, Verizon will add support for mobile devices, so consumers can launch My Nick Jr. from a tablet or smartphone—a feature that is available on CanalSat.