Discovery Kids

Looking For

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Flavio Medeiros, director of programming and acquisitions at Discovery Kids Latin America, is looking to commission and acquire animated and live-action TV series, specials and movies aimed at boys and girls ages four to eight for the kidsnet’s linear and digital platforms.

Comedic shows with heart perform well, as do shows that incorporate magic and music. Medeiros says if content features villains or more complex storylines, it should always offer “positive takeaways or values.” Television episodes usually run 11 minutes or half an hour in length, while specials and movies can be 30 minutes to two hours.

For original local animated series, Discovery Kids’ content production and distribution unit Discovery Kids Media (DKM) is on the lookout for Latin American partners. DKM is in production on two new animated series: Underdogs, the animated series (working title) with Argentinian studio MundoLoco, which follows a team of foosball players; and a look at the life of a classroom bean sprout in Bean & Friends (working title) with Chatrone Latin American Productions and Brazilian company Birdo Studio.

Discovery Kids also recently collaborated with Brazil-based PenGuin Content on Charlie, The Interviewer of Things, a 52 x 11-minute animated comedy about a chat-show host who happens to be a sheep. “It’s the first time we’ve aired a talk-show format, but it has a funny twist in that Charlie’s guests are anthropomorphic characters, including a pancake and a soccer ball,” says Medeiros.

In terms of international partnerships, DKM continues to manage redknot, Discovery’s joint-venture agreement with Corus Entertainment-owned Nelvana. Redknot’s goal is to create a new pipeline of children's content for worldwide delivery, and it is actively taking pitches. Its first project—animated preschool series Agent Binky: Pets of the Universe from Nelvana—debuted on Discovery Kids Latin America earlier this year after launching on Corus’ Canadian kidsnet Treehouse. Redknot’s second greenlight—Dog & Pony Show from Little Airplane Productions founder and CEO Josh Selig—is yet to air.

On the live-action side, Medeiros prefers content that targets six- to eight-year-olds. Top performers in the past include Discovery Kids’ original 52 x 11-minute circus arts series Big Top Academy (Apartment 11 Productions, TVOKids, Cirque du Soleil Images) and acquisitions Just Add Magic (Amazon Prime) and Odd Squad (Sinking Ship Entertainment).

Medeiros says he would like to see more gender-neutral, non-violent superhero shows for a younger four-to-eight target like eOne’s PJ Masks. “Superhero shows are usually boy-driven, but we don’t like that,” he says.

Looking at recent acquisitions, Medeiros says supernatural comedy Sadie Sparks from Parisian outfit Cyber Group Studios is a good example of a show that works well for the Discovery Kids audience. The series stars a teenage girl who struggles to manage high school life with her new role as a magician-in-training. “We like it because it’s a very kid-friendly mix of 2D and 3D animation, but it also provides more depth by dealing with issues any real-life girl could relate to,” he says.

As for what not to pitch, Medeiros says the kidsnet doesn’t look at game shows and factual content. “I get a lot of pitches about animal behavior or shows about zoos because people usually associate Discovery with that type of kids content,” he says.

Alongside linear, Discovery Kids also operates a popular YouTube channel for short-form content that has reached more than 1.2 million subscribers, and recently relaunched the Discovery Kids app. Medeiros says the majority of the kidsnet’s deals encompass exclusive pay-TV, SVOD, AVOD and free VOD rights. “Those rights for commissions, co-pros and acquisitions are usually on a title-by-title basis depending on the property, but most of our new deals encompass all of those dimensions.”