Tribal Nova enters new era with kids’ portal

Montreal new media distributor Tribal Nova is moving from piecemeal distribution of online games and video to offering a one-stop turnkey kids portal, thus entering a new phase in its content sales strategy. "Kidstudio is a concept that we developed in with certain Internet providers or broadcasters, to put online services with games and video on demand for kids in a secure and immersive environment," says Guillaume Aniorté, a partner and founder of Tribal Nova. Several months in development, Kidstudio will be available as a white-label offering, giving clients the ability to customize the interface with their own logos and other visual material. "We don’t want to create brands – we use brands like famous characters inside to promote the content," Aniorté says, alluding to his firm’s partnerships with Cookie Jar Entertainment Inc. and Corus Entertainment Inc., whose games and videos based on the popular Caillou and Franklin the Turtle characters feature prominently in Tribal Nova’s offerings. Tribal Nova partnered with two fellow Montreal interactive agencies on Kidstudio: Turbulent, which helped develop the delivery platform, and Frima Studio for the content inside. While other firms with similar one-stop kids’ portals – such as Toronto’s Kaboose Inc. and Kelowna BC’s Club Penguin (CNM, Dec. 9/05) – offer kid-to-kid interactivity through tightly policed forums, chat programs and other software, Aniorté says such features can be difficult and costly to moderate, and are probably not of interest to Kidstudio’s target demographic anyway. "I would say before 10 or 12 they’re not very familiar with MSN Messenger, chatting, et cetera," he says. "They are much more interested by those kinds of content or interactive communities when they are 12 and older." One key differentiator between Kidstudio and other offerings is the interface, which Aniorté refers to as "an immersive environment." Once children are logged on, Kidstudio’s proprietary executable browser denies them access to the broader Internet without a password. "You cannot have access to any hyperlinks, everything is secure," Aniorté says. "I would say it’s like a huge CD-ROM – when you start a CD-ROM it’s full-screen, kids play inside….If they want to quit, they have to enter a password to end the game Kidstudio." Keeping kids confined to an age-appropriate portion of a website can be especially compelling for specialty broadcasters, whose online presence might include content from both children’s channels and more mature ones. "If you are looking at some of the environments of broadcasters, as you can see there are a million ways for kids to lose themselves," he says. For partly that reason, Tribal Nova will position Kidstudio in different ways for ISPs and broadcasters, Aniorté says. Another factor is that stand-alone online content portals often don’t have the rights to use clips or short extracts from popular shows – those ancillary rights are usually offered to broadcasters at the same time as TV rights. As a result, Aniorté says, "they have to build a catalog of content, and then we provide this catalog….We’ve got the content, we’ve got the platform, we’ve got the front-end, we just have to operate through the ISP to the customers." Tribal Nova’s biggest current ISP customer is Bell Canada – the firm provides games for Sympatico/MSN’s Kids Corner as well as the portal’s Kidsmania pay site. On the broadcast side, Tribal Nova has Télé-Québec, the province’s public broadcaster. Even those existing customers will likely move to a new agreement including Kidstudio, Aniorté says, due to trends such as the increasing reliance on outsourced talent and expertise for interactive properties. "We can see that they want to be in collaboration, with companies such as ours, because we can take a risk with them," he says. "We can provide the environment, we finance the development and implementation of the environment, and we take a risk together." Aniorté adds that Tribal Nova’s work is often eligible for funding sources, such as Bell Broadcast and New Media Fund, the Telefilm Canada New Media Fund, that conventional broadcasters can’t access. "We are not in…a work-for-hire dynamic. We are business partners," he says. International markets also beckon. Tribal Nova is in talks with foreign content portals in an attempt to convert them to Kidstudio clients. A secondary goal, Aniorté says, is helping raise the profile of Canadian producers in other parts of the world. "It’s a real way to promote Canadian content outside Canada, which is a real problem right now for producers – to find a way to the content not just in Canada but elsewhere," he says. Even abroad, Aniorté believes that the value proposition Kidstudio offers will have universal appeal. "If we provide a full environment, a secure environment, an immersive environment, we also the parents that their kids are in a good environment, with good content inside."

Tribal Nova enters new era with kids’ portal

News | 05/15/2006 4:00 am EDT

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