With a few years under their belts, the specialty channels catering to kids have had time to stake out their ground on the broadcasting scene. Meanwhile, the conventional broadcasters and veteran specialties have been looking to forge their own identifiable niche in the widening landscape of children’s programming. The theme at the kidcasters this season is one of fine-tuning as opposed to major programming change as they cement their programming strengths and slowly seek to expand their reach and capture a wider demographic.

Following are highlights of the programming strategies and philosophies, as well as some of the new shows underway.

*Family Channel

Family Channel launched the fall season in October with a new on-air branding, promo and marketing campaign.

The look attempts to create a more current, contemporary feel to the channel, as well as bring in a broader audience, says vp programming Kevin Wright. ‘We are not trying to be in-your-face, irreverent and aggressively kids like some stations,’ he explains. ‘We want a broader appeal, targeting all ages – kids watching tv on their own, older siblings and families watching tv together.’

Coinciding with the freshened on-air look is a slate of new series which Wright describes as ‘more modern, more fun – we are lightening up.’

The recent round of commissioned projects targets a wide-ranging demo. Wright describes the new series as ‘kid-focused but family-friendly – that’s the type of show you will continue to find on Family Channel, targeting that nine-to-12 demo, but which viewers of all ages will enjoy.’

Among the new series are Telescene Film Group of Montreal’s live-action comedy Misguided Angels, about a pair of bumbling angels sent back to Earth to re-earn their wings after getting into trouble one too many times in heaven; Hoze Houndz, from Amberwood Productions of Ottawa, chronicling the adventures of a team of fire-fighting Dalmatians who run their own fire department; and new episodes of Cinar’s supernatural live-action series Are You Afraid of The Dark?

The schedule is a mix of animation and live action, a balance which Wright intends to maintain.

While roughly 85% of the schedule is slotted for series, family films are another important focus at the channel. Recently, Family signed a deal with wic to take first or second window after pay-tv on a package of new feature films. ‘We are not big enough to generate a large enough licence fee to be the only Canadian broadcaster on a film, but we will take a window,’ explains Wright.

Family has a 30% Cancon commitment, which is dedicated almost exclusively to new, first-run programming, says Wright. Acquisitions are few and far between, with most projects straight commissions or coproductions.

‘We market ourselves as a premium service, so we take an aggressive position commissioning first-run Canadian programming,’ he says. ‘We are willing to pay a bit more to build brands and carry them through on an exclusive basis.’

As a commercial-free service, Family is always on the lookout for shorts to be used as interstitials. Wright says it is difficult to find shorts which appeal to family audiences, adding that most of the available interstitials target preschool audiences.

*Teletoon

This season Teletoon introduced new animated series targeting the 10-to-14 demo, an age group which the three-year-old station had not focused on previously. CineGroupe’s Mega Babies and Decode Entertainment’s Angela Anaconda are among the new additions.

Director of programming Carole Benaut describes the shows as ‘edgy yet fun,’ and says she will be on the lookout for more projects in this vein.

Teletoon is also skewing older in its weekend afternoon schedule with action-based animation like Nelvana’s Mythic Warriors.

Animated features are spotlighted the first Saturday of each month at 5 p.m., generally programmed around an upcoming holiday or event.

The station’s Cancon requirement is 50% overall, most of which is spent on original programming, says Benaut. This season the budget for new Canadian shows was $16 million.

Benaut looks for projects that showcase unique or new animation techniques and styles, and witty, humorous scripts. Teletoon commissions projects to be versioned in English and French (for its Quebec service).

*Treehouse TV

This season Treehouse tv moved from a four-and-a-half-hour program wheel to a single broadcast day from 6 a.m. to 3 a.m. Without the four-times-a-day repeated wheel, Treehouse can offer more variety in its programming throughout the day.

Other good news for the preschool channel is a rapidly expanding audience. According to vp of programming and production Peter Moss, viewership has doubled over the last year. Treehouse boasts a 3.3 share average for two- to 11-year-olds, with holiday highs reaching a five-point share.

Moss suspects ratings would be higher if Treehouse was not so high up on the third tier. Furthermore, in the Toronto market, Rogers takes Treehouse off the air at 6 p.m. ‘Supper-hour is a time when parents want preschool programming,’ he says.

Programming strategies for Treehouse’s core two-to-six demo have stayed constant over the three years since the specialty’s launch.

Moss describes all of Treehouse’s series as ‘story-driven and imaginatively challenging. We are not an educational preschool channel,’ he says. ‘Although there is an educational focus, we like to think of this as an imagination station.’

While Treehouse programs do have an imbedded curriculum of language and/or pro-social development, Moss explains that these educational goals are accomplished in an imaginative and challenging way. ‘The programs are sensitive to the developmental reality of kids but are not straight educational.’

Series run from puppetry to live action to animation, as well as crossover projects like the new Salter Street preschool series Pirates, which combines puppets, live action, cgi and musical scores to tell tales of marine life.

Treehouse’s Cancon requirements are 60% overall and programming is picked up through a combination of commissions, second windows and acquisitions, says Wright.

Canadian productions on the schedule include Care Bears and Little Bear (Nelvana); Little Star and Iris The Happy Professor (Desclez Productions); and St. Bear’s Dolls Hospital (Norma Denys Productions), which combines live action, puppets and animation in a series about doctors, nurses, teddy bears and rag dolls who mend wounds.

*YTV

Veteran kids specialty ytv has established a strong and growing audience in its core two-to-11 demographic. In recent weeks, for example, The Zone pulled in up to 500,000 viewers, says vp programming and production Peter Moss.

With the younger crowd tuning in, ytv is now looking to entice 16- to 18-year-olds to the channel.

In its next round of licence hearings, ytv will again ask the crtc to remove the condition which states that the protagonists in all its programs must be under age 18, thus allowing the station to program for an older demo and air shows whose main characters are in their early 20s.

‘Kids are aspirational, they want to know about what happens next,’ says Moss, ‘and it’s hard to get those older kids to watch characters under 18.’

This season ytv launched a new daypart, SnitStation, on Saturday and Sunday mornings to house its slate of animated programs. The hosted block is led by a walking, talking tv and a young girl princess from outer space who explore Earth together.

The ytv schedule skews older as the day progresses, beginning with ytv junior, which programs preschool shows with a funnier, sillier bent to separate itself from Treehouse. Series include Radical Sheep Productions’ Panda Bear Daycare, Ruffus The Dog and Big Comfy Couch. The after-school block is skewed eight to 10; 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. targets eight to 10-year-olds with Mona The Vampire, I Was A Sixth Grade Alien, Worst Witch, Big Wolf on Campus, Watership Down and Incredible Story Studio. In February, Just A Kid, a new tween series produced by Calgary-based Riverwood Productions, launches at 7:30 p.m. The program follows the antics of a rebellious, rough, city kid who is forced to live with a distant cousin in the country.

At 9 p.m., a slightly older crowd (reaching up into the 15- to 16-year-old set) is targeted with Student Bodies and The Adventures of Shirley Holmes.

ytv must broadcast 60% Cancon in primetime and 50% overall. This season, Moss says the 6-9 p.m. prime block is 80% Canadian.

‘Our Cancon works very well for us,’ says Moss. ‘Of our top 40 programs for two- to 11-year-olds, 20 are Canadian.’

ytv’s deal structures cover all possibilities – coventures with other broadcasters, simultaneous and shared windows, and first-run commissions.

Programs are mostly story-driven with few magazine-type shows, says Moss. ytv looks for series ideas that have a surprising bent, odd characters or scenarios, and ‘a weirdly entertaining appeal’ that challenge young viewers and keep them laughing, explains Moss.

‘We appeal to kids on the level that you’ve had a hard day at school and your brain needs a rest, so watch ytv.’

*CBC

With a successful programming schedule for the preschool audience, including such shows as Sesame Park, Rolie Polie Olie and Franklin, and a strong teen block (Jonovision, Street Cents), cbc is focusing its development efforts on programs targeting kids aged six to eight.

Projects in the pipeline include The Hippo Tub Company, an animated series being developed with Evening Sky Entertainment. Based on Anne Murray’s popular kids tune Hey Daddy There’s A Hippo in My Bathtub, The Hippo Tub Company will tell the tales of a hippo named Harley who inhabits Drainworld and will be traditionally animated with digital ink and paint. cbc is also working with Sullivan Entertainment on an animated property, Wellington Weevil, in which traditional tales are told by a community of bugs. Halifax writer Jeff Rosen (Theodore Tugboat) is penning the scripts.

cbc’s head of children’s, Adrien Mills, says the plan is to slowly expand into a full block of programming for six- to 12-year-old audiences.

Microtainment’s Daring and Grace, a new youth series following the adventures of a pair of teen detectives, will launch in January.

Snippets, a sub-series based on Sesame Park and coproduced with Children’s Television Workshop, will also begin airing in January.

In keeping with cbc’s distinctively Canadian mandate, Mills says he would like to see more live-action shows on the schedule.

‘Animation is made to sell internationally whereas live-action shows can help brand a strongly Canadian identity on cbc,’ says Mills. ‘We are awash with animation, so I am looking to inject real humans into the schedule over the next couple of years and reflect Canada onscreen.’

Proposals most likely to land on the public broadcaster are those which are nonviolent and educational as well as entertaining. Mills says he prefers to take on projects involving new writing or production talent – ‘shows that take risks, that might not necessarily make it onto the private networks.’

First-run prelicences and coproductions make up most of the kids schedule, although occasional acquisitions find their way into the lineup.

Programming for caregivers and parents is another push at the pubcaster. An outreach program, Get Set For Live, brings child care and development messages to adults through interstitials, as well as in print material and on packaging for consumer products such as Sunlight soap and Lipton’s soup.

*TVOntario

‘We are considered the prudes,’ says tvontario’s Pat Ellingson of the station’s non-commercial, educationally based and non-violent kids programming. ‘We drive some producers to distraction re-editing programs that have already aired on other networks. But parents expect a certain consistency from us and we deliver on that.’

However, tvo’s creative head of children’s and daytime stresses shows have to be entertaining to keep youngsters tuning in.

As examples Ellingson points to The Adventures of the After Math Crew, which premiered this fall on tvo. Produced by East West Media, the show is aimed at six- to 12-year-olds and teaches math skills through games, scavenger hunts and comedy acts. Also new to the schedule is The Magic Adventures of Mumfie (Gullane Pictures/Catalyst Entertainment), Rainbow Fish (Decode/Sony Wonder), the kids wildlife series Zoboomafoo (Cinar) and new episodes of Noddy (Catalyst/BBC Worldwide/The Enid Blyton Company).

tvo is a coproduction partner on a number of programs on the fall and upcoming schedules.

The educational broadcaster is a partner in Nelvana’s new preschool series Elliot Moose, which follows the animated adventures of an inquisitive stuffed moose and his pals as they learn to get along with others and discover their place in the larger world.

Why?, a series of three-minute science shorts launching in January, is a joint venture with Redcap Productions. tvo and Motion are producing a preschool series, Rockabye Bubble, in which a group of children are taken on journeys into wildlife and environmental habitats after being tucked into bed.

tvo is also working with the bbc on Dinosaur Detectives, a live-action series documenting the search for dinosaur fossils around the world, and plans to partner on a Canadian version of the u.k. preschool series Jamboree, which deals with cognitive skills.

Preschool programming is a top priority at tvo. While there are numerous programs dealing with social and emotional skills, Ellingson says few focus on cognitive development such as literacy and numeracy, and she is looking to bring more reading-, writing- and arithmetic-based series into the schedule.

Programming for the eight-to-11 demo is typically animation and Ellingson is interested in adding more live action to the lineup.

tvo’s children’s block starts at 6 a.m. with preschool programming running until 12:30 p.m. From 4-6:30 p.m., six- to eight-year-olds are targeted, and beginning at 6:30 p.m., the schedule skews the eight-to-11 demo.

The Saturday morning children’s block was expanded this fall to 12:30 p.m. from a 9:30 a.m. sign-off. The lineup is a mix of preschool programs and shows for six- to 11-year-olds.

On Saturdays at 4:30 p.m., tvo looks to tween, teen and family audiences with the science-based magazine show Inquiring Minds and Get A Life, which discusses career paths with youths.

In production for next season are an additional 25 episodes of Zoboomafoo and Tales From The Longhouse, a combination puppetry/animation native folklore series from Catalyst starring Tom Jackson.

With a limited budget and a hefty Cancon requirement, Ellingson says tvo generally purchases series as opposed to one-offs or limited series.

The broadcaster often shares first windows, as was the case with Noddy, which premiered on both cbc and tvo.

tvo is also focusing on interactivity in its children’s block. This season, a new interactive game, produced in-house, was added to The Crawlspace, allowing callers to interact with animated characters while deducing historical and geographical facts from a set of clues.

*CTV

At ctv, senior vp programming Susanne Boyce casts a wide net when it comes to children’s shows. While the six-to-12 demo is the specific target for most of ctv’s kids series and specials, she looks for projects which will attract preschool and teen audiences as well as parents.

‘We are a conventional broadcaster so we want a broad reach,’ says Boyce. ‘My philosophy is to make the schedule as inclusive as possible…so that all age groups feel welcome.’

While many of the kidscasters stick with series, one-off family specials, programmed around holidays and special events, are a particular focus at ctv.

For example, over Christmas ctv will air Stories From The Seventh Fire, a half-hour tale combining 2D animated artwork composited on 3D animated backgrounds and combining aboriginal stories, art and culture. The show was produced by Gerri Cook (Dinosaur Soup Productions, Edmonton), Greg Coyes (Scorched Wood Communications, Vancouver) and Ava Karvonen (Karvonen Films, Edmonton). The National Film Board and ctv affiliate cfrn have put development money down on an additional three half-hours, budgeted at $400,000 each.

Although Boyce says she cannot pin down the exact number of specials commissioned or acquired per year, the broadcaster’s conditions of licence call for 18 hours a year of Canadian family specials, variety, kids, music, and docs. This season, Boyce says she has picked up roughly 26 hours in these categories.

When it comes to proposals, Boyce says she looks for surprises and particularly likes to take projects developed out of the regions, with many shows on the sked developed out of ctv’s Vancouver and Halifax offices.

Boyce says her forte when it comes to kids projects is dramatic series, such as Magician’s House, based on the books by William Corlett and produced by Forefront Entertainment of Vancouver and Kudos Production of London, Eng. The six-episode series, in which a magician weaves spells around children and animals, will begin airing this Christmas. Boyce cites the program as an example of a kids series sure to capture audiences of all ages.

Slated for an April delivery is D’Myna Leagues, a half-hour animated comedy about a minor league baseball team produced by Studio B in Vancouver.

Saturday morning from 6:30 a.m. to noon is reserved for kids programming, with a heavy emphasis on animation. Current series include Nelvana’s Flying Rhinos and Birdz, and a Disney block. ctv has also licensed the new Nelvana series Mythic Warriors.

In the 7 p.m. Saturday slot is Twice In A Lifetime, a family series produced by Toronto’s Pebblehut Productions consisting of stories of people who, after death, are given a second chance to return to Earth and correct a mistake. Al Waxman stars.

Sunday morning, 6:30-10 a.m. is slanted towards nature and science shows for kids with Acorn, The Nature Nut, Owl tv and Wonder Why? New episodes of the Minds Eye/Anaid Productions series Mentors begin in January. The limited series is about a 14-year-old boy who brings historical figures into the present through a special computer program.

While early morning and afternoon kids blocks are common on most channels, Boyce says she is staying away from these slots, preferring to program specials during key kid viewing times such as Christmas and March break.

Next season’s schedule is still under discussion, says Boyce, with strategy sessions in November and December dealing with the effect of the new crtc policy on broadcast schedules. But Boyce hints she is looking at commissioning a soap opera for kids, although plans are still at a tentative stage.

*Global Television

Over the past few seasons, Global Television has been refocusing its Sunday morning kids block to skew slightly older, targeting a tween/teen audience. National program director Howard Slutsken says the experiment has proven successful and Global is continuing to build this programming.

This fall’s Sunday lineup includes Clueless (also stripped Monday through Friday at 4 p.m.), Sabrina and new episodes of Fireworks Entertainment’s Real Kids Real Adventures, chronicling the heroic acts of children.

Another tween property, Telescene’s Student Bodies, airs Saturday mornings.

Few modifications have been made to the Monday to Friday kids lineup, which is dominated by preschool programming in the morning and tween shows early afternoon.

The only new series commissioned by Global for the fall launch is the 65 half-hour improv series Fibi’s Funny Bones from Vancouver’s Blair Murdoch Productions. The program targets eight- to 11-year-olds and airs Monday through Sunday at 7 a.m. Global renewed for a second season Under The Blue Rainbow, a preschool series from Just Peachy Productions out of the Maritimes that airs at 6 a.m. seven days a week.

Entering its third season, Montreal-based SDA Productions’ Popular Mechanics for Kids has been a ‘huge success,’ says Slutsken.

Children’s specials and one-off programs are seldom commissioned, says Slutsken, as Global’s strategy is to give viewers the consistency of a locked-down schedule.

While the Sunday morning tween/teen block is strong, Slutsken admits that Saturday morning’s numbers are ‘a little softer,’ which he attributes to fragmentation of the market.

All of the broadcasters are attempting to carve out their niches in kids programming, he says, adding that Global’s track record in the preschool and tween market has proven itself over the past several years.

‘And we are going to be looking at how to best develop that in light of the competition and not just other television services. But we also have to deal with video and the Internet, and disposable time – parents programming extra-curricular activities for their kids.’

Plans for next year’s children’s block are still in the early stages, says Slutsken. Furthermore, Global is currently in the process of evaluating its schedule in light of the crtc’s June Canadian tv policy announcement. It’s too early to tell how it will affect the kids block, says Slutsken, adding: ‘Certainly there is a market to be served and a financial justification for kids programming to a certain extent. We will look at it carefully and decide how we will approach it for next season…there’s a lot of uncertainty right now [about the new crtc policy].’

New commissions of kids series will depend on the outcome of these strategy sessions, he adds.