Established in 1993 by Kalanidhi Maran, the Sun TV network has grown to become India’s largest media conglomerate, boasting of over Thirty Three TV Channels and reaching to more than 95 million households in India; and also entertaining viewers in 27 other countries including USA, Canada, Europe, Singapore, Malaysia, Srilanka, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand.
But that’s not all; the Sun TV network has made it a mandate to keep the young audience of southern India as engaged with its content offering as it has for the grownups. With a bouquet of four diverse channels on offer: Chutti TV (Tamil), Kochu TV (Malayalam), Chintu TV (Kannada) and Kushi TV (Telugu) the network has managed to fill the void for entertaining content for kids in the four major states of southern India, namely Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh (Seemandhra & Telangana).
AnimationXpress.com recently got in touch with Kavitha Jaubin, cluster head of Sun TV networks -Kids, as she completed eight years in the organisation, to get her views on how has she seen this genre grow over the years and what we can expect from the network in the kids’ space in coming days.
“Hollywood movies that played on our GEC and kids’ cluster managed to grab eyeballs and the trend still continues even after years since we experimented with this idea. Although we were apprehensive initially it has now become a USP for our channels,” Kavitha explained on one of the major initiatives that she had taken in her early days. Interactivity through the network’s various channels also played a vital role in garnering high ratings for their home grown live action shows. “Dora the explorer was loved and adored by kids when it started to play out on Chutti TV eight years ago. This gave us a valuable learning on how it’s important to keep kids engaged with the lead character of any show that we show on our channels,” she further added.
Some of the popular shows and movies that have topped the charts on the kids’ network have been Penguins of Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, Dora the explorer, Avatar, Adventures of Jackie Chan, Geronimo Stilton, Magic wonderland, SpongeBob square pants, Barney & friends, jimmy neutron, He-man, George of the Jungle, Lucky Luke, Spider man, Bumba, Titieuf, Little Krishna, Honey I shrunk the kids, Krypto the super dog and Loonatics unleashed.
With globalisation having posed challenges in the media sector and in the television territory particularly, it has become very important that fresh and tender concepts are brought in to the small screen inorder to keep the audiences glued to the channel. “With easy and adequate exposure to international programs, the audience often yearns for quality and differentiated programming,” Kavitha highlighted. By adapting international shows through merely translating them into the local language, the channel builds a better connect with the audience, which in turn helps in increasing the ratings for the same, and allowing the opportunity for more diverse brands to come on board and advertise on the channel in question.
But, to drive ratings the major contributor is content. “It’s very important to have a good mix of humour, edutainment and technology based shows and similar programmes, which are also much in demand amongst children,” she mentioned, while speaking about the content strategy for the channels. “With the other household members viewing GEC content, children also tend to incline towards consuming the same; hence it is very important and equally difficult to outwit the GEC space by creating alot of addictive and fun shows for children in order to keep them glued to channels catering to primarily their consumption needs and patterns.”
On the kids’ channels under the Sun network’s umbrella, 80 per cent of the content comprises of animation shows, which are internationally successful tent poles being telecast with local translations, while the remaining is live action studio based or outdoor shows. “Mythological stories have been receiving good patronage in the recent times. While In specific, art & craft shows, short duration fillers have also managed to top the favourite’s graphs on our channels,” she shared.
One of the most recent trends that 
major broadcasters have practiced is to create themes on their channels around a major festival or a particularly popular day and the Sun Network hasn’t missed the train either. Sharing the plans ahead about Sun TV’s special activity planned for the festival of lights this year, Kavitha beamed, “We have planned a ‘Happiness truck’, which is a custom made, branded truck filled with goodies and smart gifts that will travel across four major southern cities and make a pit stop near homes and surprise them with gifts. And for children’s day, we have planned a first one of a kind ‘on ground meet and greet’ encounter.”
The ground outreach, which major broadcasters are now practicing has also become a fad, since it helps them better connect with their viewers. It also allows them to get first hand feedback on which are the most popular shows and characters that the kids like to see on television. Apart from also getting insights on what could they be doing better.
“The changing preferences of audiences are a continuous process and this vital exercise always helps and is a part of our core activity. It only allows us to continue providing the best in kids’ content in the region and we would continue to promote more and more inclusive viewership,” Kavitha signed off.