Eyeing the nation's growing market for kids' television programs, MTV Networks is set to bring its popular Nickelodeon channel to Taiwan starting from September, a company executive said yesterday.
"We want to offer more diversified content and increase our brand visibility here," Bess Lin (林家芬), supervisor of MTV Networks Taiwan's marketing and communications department, told the Taipei Times.
Initially, the company will test the market waters by licensing its popular shows SpongeBob SquarePants and Dora the Explorer to a strategic partner here, she said.
Possible partners include current kids' channel operators owned by Eastern Multimedia Co (東森媒體科技), Fubon Group (富邦集團) or Disney, and MTV Networks will announce the partnership late next month, she said.
"Kids' channels are very popular and successful here but their contents need to be enhanced," Lin said, adding localization works are currently underway for Nickelodeon shows including Chinese-language voice overs and subtitles.
Nickelodeon was the world's first cable channel devoted to programming for children and youth, making its debut in 1979 in the US as "Pinwheel," and subsequently renamed as "Nickelodeon" in 1981.
It was originally commercial free, but started incorporating commercial breaks in fall 1984.
The channel belongs to MTV Networks, a subsidiary of US media conglomerate Viacom Inc.
According to Lin, licensing programs to local channel operators is part of its Asian strategy, with MTV Networks doing the same in China, Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, India, Indonesia and Singapore.
For instance, China's state broadcaster CCTV expanded its agreement with Nickelodeon in September 2004 to gain rights to all episodes of Nickelodeon's animated shows CatDog and The Wild Thornberrys, which have attracted impressive viewing figures on CCTV's children channel.
The debut of Nickelodeon's shows here are partly attributed to growing competition between kids' channels, which heated up this year when Momo Kids (Momo親子台) officially came on air in May, going head-to-head with Yoyo TV (東森幼幼台).
MTV Taiwan expected its advertisement revenues this year to soar by 90 percent to hit around US$300,000, up from last year's US$150,000, as a result of customized sales packages and tie-ups with concert promotions.
The company is also aggressively promoting another division, Neopets.com -- a virtual pet fantasy land -- in Taiwan.
It is looking to increase Neopets.com's local membership to 1.5 million in coming years from the current 210,000, Bobby Yuan (袁棟), vice president and general manager of MTV Taiwan, said last Monday.
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