YouTube-focused pre-school entertainment company Moonbug Entertainment confirmed plans to launch a dedicated channel on the MultiChoice’s DStv pay TV platform in Sub-Saharan Africa. “It has opened up the market because pay TV operators are now hungry for unique content that we can provide,” Moonbug EMEA and APAC managing director Nicolas Eglau said.
The Moonbug Kids channel will launch in October and will include content from across the Moonbug portfolio. The pre-school service will be available to all 21.7 million DStv subscribers across 45 African countries and will air in English, with content including CoComelon, Blippi, Gecko’s Garage, Morphle, Arpo and recent acquisitions such as Little Angel and Oddbods. The channel will be available to all 21.7 million DStv subscribers across 45 African countries and will air in English.
Eglau recently affirmed that the company sees a significant opportunity to launch premium advertising-free linear channels with pay TV operators, particularly given that Hollywood studios such as Disney have shut down channels in the interests of focusing on their own streaming platforms. Eglau believes that the European market will follow close behind APAC, creating space for new channel providers to fill demand from pay TV providers. Eglau said that Moonbug is now planning to launch a channel in Turkey in partnership with a couple of operators later this year.
The Turkish channel will, for the first time, be fully localised. He that the company is open to further linear channel launches in EMEA, including in western European markets. Moonbug earlier this year hired former Discovery exec – and former Digitürk chief content officer and CMO – Dilek Doyran as director, distribution and content partnerships, EMEA, to help take its business forward in the region. “We are very keen to do this. Turkey is a significant market with a very young demographic, and we can do this in other markets,” Eglau said.
Eglau said that Moonbug’s strategy of continuing to acquire more content that can be distributed in multiple ways also means it is now in sight of launching a second channel. “We have so much content that I believe we would be able to launch a second channel in some markets,” he said. "The second channel would, he said, be targeted, like Moonbug Kids, at the pre-school audience but with a different mix of content and “a selection of brands that would follow a certain logic."