ITVX Kids to launch July 2023
March 10, 2023
By Colin Mann
In a move that will see the closure of linear channel CITV, UK commercial broadcaster ITV is to launch a new dedicated destination for kids on its AVoD platform ITVX – ITVX Kids – promising more content than ever before, across a range of titles appealing to both school age and pre-school age children.
Launching in July 2023, and rolling out across the school summer holiday period, the new consolidated children’s offering will also see ITV taking its approach to six to 12 year-olds content, streaming-only, from early Autumn 2023.
ITVX Kids is part of ITV’s continuing drive to supercharge its presence in streaming, delivering content to audiences however they want to watch it. BARB viewing data demonstrates that while the average amount of broadcast TV minutes of kids TV channels watched by four to 15 year-olds per week has declined by -62 per cent since 2019, unmatched viewing has risen by +30 per cent in the same period, demonstrating the streaming first trend in kids viewing.
The Kids ITVX homepage, accessed within a child-safe ITVX Kids profile, will bring together over 100 brilliant titles in a dedicated homepage, with over 1,000 hours of programming to choose from, a near doubling of the current offer, with curated rails and collections.
The curated collections will feature a wide range of titles, including brand new programmes dropping monthly on the service, from July 2023. This new content will span a wide-range of genres and subjects including comedy, gameshows, live action, animation and sport and sourced from a broad spectrum of distributors from small Independents as well as regional UK suppliers.
“We’re really excited to launch this dedicated destination for kids on ITVX, which will be home to a wealth of content including new series, recognisable brands and existing favourites for a range of ages, all in one child-safe area, with editorial curation to guide viewing,” commented Craig Morris, Managing Editor of ITVX. “The wealth of content will be available to stream for free, with the option for parents to choose ad free viewing, through a subscription to ITVX Premium.”
The range of new shows will complement existing favourites, including Lloyd of the Flies, Lily’s Driftwood Bay, Claude, Mumfie, Mystery Lane and The Rubbish World of Dave Spud (pictured), which will also be available on ITVX Kids.
Brand new episodes of The Rubbish World of Dave Spud are commissioned for broadcast in 2024 and they will be premiered on ITVX.
ITVX Kids will also have some much-loved British brands, including the animated series of Mr Bean, and for younger pre-school children, TeleTubbies Let’s Go, Sooty and Bob The Builder amongst other titles.
Commissions that ITV was able to greenlight, thanks to funding from the BFI Young Audiences Content Fund which ran until 2022, will also appear on ITVX Kids. These include sustainable arts and craft series Makeaway Takeaway, HOW, highlighting amazing facts, science and historical stories in a fun, fast paced, hands on format, The Sound Collector an animated series narrated by Keira Knightley, about a little boy who has a passion for sound despite being hard of hearing and Happy The Hoglet – which helps pre-schoolers navigate those big emotional rollercoasters that comes with being young.
Accessibility for all children who want to enjoy content is a big priority for ITVX. The ambition is for 100 per cent of content to be subtitled on ITVX Kids, with around 20 per cent of the content on ITVX Kids audio described, and the offering will also include British Sign Language original programming such as Mission Employable and Daremaster, produced by Signpost productions.
As a consequence of this new streaming approach, and responding to the changing ways children and their parents are increasingly accessing content, the CITV broadcast channel will close in early Autumn, once the new streaming destination for kids has been rolled out across platforms and devices, over the summer holidays. However, ITV will maintain the LittleBe pre-school segment on ITVBe and will offer some children’s content in the early mornings on ITV2 from September with strong cross promotion to ITVX.