by Nancy Lees
The German kids broadcasting market is about get a little more crowded this month as Nick straps on its lederhosen and takes a second stab at succeeding with a 24-hour kids channel in the region. And with Cartoon Network launching a six-hour Saturday morning block on Kabel 1 (fueling rumors that a full channel launch is in the works for 2006), everyone's curious to see whether veteran domestic kidnets such as Super RTL and KI.KA will be able to shut down the newbies and hang onto their considerable marketshare.
Launching on September 12, Nick Germany will take up residence in the broadcast stream previously occupied by MTV2. Its initial reach will be around 30 million German households, meaning the nation's 8.6 million kids under age 13 should have no trouble finding it. The channel's program director, Markus Andorfer, expects to average a 5% share of three- to 13-year-olds at launch, and his goal is to double that figure by year two.
But the real trick will be stealing viewers away from competing outlets, some of which still pull their biggest ratings with programming from Nick's production arm. Super RTL, for example, routinely attracts a huge audience with SpongeBob SquarePants, and its license for the toon doesn't expire until 2009.
To trigger some audience migration, Andorfer plans to push the exclusive availability of new Nick shows such as Danny Phantom, Avatar and Chalk Zone - all of which will make their free-to-air German debuts on Nick this season. And he'll also be offering special viewing events for popular series including SpongeBob.
FULL ARTICLE AT http://www.kidscreen.com/articles/magazine/20050901/germany.html
Young People's Media Network - Coordinator
c/o ECMC (European Centre for Media Competence)
Bergstr. 8 / 11th floor
D-45770 Marl - Germany
Email: cschuepp@unicef.org
URL: www.unicef.org/magic
Mailing list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/youthful-media
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