280. Peace of Mind for Parents: How Kids Stream Provides Safe, Enriching Shows with Dean Koocher

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00:01:10
Dean Koocher, what an honor and a privilege to be speaking with you today. Thank you so much for taking the time. How's everything going? Great, Sandy. So good to be here and talking to your audience.

00:01:21
Really, really pleased. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. I know. And it was funny because we were just sitting here talking.

00:01:26
I was, stop, stop. This is good stuff. Let's hit the record button. All right. So for the audience, Dean Creature is the co founder of Kids Stream, which is the largest kids movie tv streaming platform, aka the Netflix for kids shows.

00:01:42
So I love it because it's enriching, engaging, ad free entertainment for kids with no violence or any other bad, negative stuff. Where were you 20 years ago when I had a three year old watching television? Right. Well, it's gotten more challenging for them today, I can tell you the parents today, because there's so many options out there. Kids stream, we feel like we're not the largest, but we're very specific in what we offer.

00:02:07
And like you said, we don't have advertising. And it's important because advertising, when you have your kids subject to the first of all, you don't need them subject to advertise the sugary cereals, whatever, toys. But in beyond that, once you're watching advertised, your kids are watching that they become kind of a number for the advertisers. So their habits are basically being sold. And what they're watching is not necessarily what you might want to pick for them because it's what's driving numbers.

00:02:39
It's nice to have an environment. We feel like we sell peace of mind with kidstream. Not only do we pick really good shows, because that's where I think most of our value is, bringing really great content, but we don't have the advertising with it. So you feel safe when you're watching us. Peace of mind.

00:02:56
Absolutely. And at the end of the day, these networks, it's a business and they need to make money. And how do they make money on advertising? However, I could do without hearing all of the pharmaceutical ads that are out there. We're at the point now, my husband and I, we just hit the mute button because I'm like, I can't hear this anymore because they play the same ones over and over and over and nobody needs that information in their head because they're sending the wrong message to people.

00:03:22
So certainly children don't need that either. That they need to be eating the sugary stuff. Yeah, I mean, I like some of the fun ads, too. I'm not, of course, an adult. And we can make, like you said, we, you and I can make our own decisions.

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But when it's hitting our children, especially our market, is we really focus on two to nine year olds. So they're really impressionable, smart, smart kids at those ages, and yet they're still very innocent. And we don't want to have them barraged with stuff that they don't need. Well, no, because their minds are still developing. And if you see somebody that you look up to and they're endorsing something, you believe it's true because they're so impressionable.

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Oh, my gosh, they're so impressionable. So it's hard not to blame the networks for doing it. Right, because without them, I wouldn't be watching my tennis channel. The way the world works. Yeah, we love it.

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But in today's world, for 499 a month, you can't even feed a person one meal for that price these days. And it's unlimited. They can watch it wherever they want. You can bring the phone with you, you can have them on the iPad, you can have it on the television. No commercials.

00:04:36
And we just have constant, beautiful shows. I mean, right now we're up to about 65, 70 series with over almost 700 and 5800 hours of television. A lot of stuff is small for children, younger children, they like to see smaller things, maybe eleven minutes at a time or even for the youngest, even five minutes at a time. But we just have tons of stuff. It's constantly getting new stuff in.

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But we have a lot of classics too. We don't have to have all new shows. Like, we have a lot of shows that were big in the 90s that we think are really still as solid as ever, like Barney and Thomas the train. I just picked up a show called Pingu, which is a classic old show, the New York Times just did a big piece on that one and so we just have a ton of good shows. But we also have some brand new shows that no one's ever seen here in the US and we're the only place to find them too.

00:05:31
So we do a real mix. That's awesome. Yeah. My son watched Thomas the train and I enjoyed it too because I watched it with know many times, the Wiggles. Speaking of the Wiggles.

00:05:46
Speaking of the Wiggles. We have a great relationship with the Wiggles. They're amazing. They were just here touring through the US. I don't know if some of your audience saw them, but they just recorded a 25 2nd thing.

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Could I share it with you? Please do. Go ahead, share your screen. I would love it. Okay, here's our friends the Wiggles talking about kids dream.

00:06:08
G'day. Kids dream families. We're the Wiggles. You know, our friends at kids dream genuinely care about providing better tv for children and have curated a top rated library of worry free and enriching shows for children of all ages. Try kids dream for free.

00:06:26
Let's wiggle together at Kidstream TV.

00:06:32
Love it. Yeah, they're great property. Their newest one is called the Fruit Salad Big show, which we've just put on one of our newer shows. So we have a bunch of their content and really like what they stand for. So thanks for bringing them up.

00:06:50
Fantastic. Fantastic. So what was the story behind? Because I love hearing people's stories. What was the story behind you getting this started?

00:07:03
Well, I was fortunate enough I fell into this business in the friend of mine named Ken Weissman was starting a company. He had been running, Thomas the tank engine here in New York. He was the one who brought it up. He was a personal friend and he wanted to start a company in kids entertainment. And I was in big corporate world.

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I was living out in Louisville, Kentucky. I'd been working for Kentucky Fried chicken and their headquarters, and I had always.

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My son's a senior at University of Louisville. Oh, I loved Louisville. It was hard to drag me away, but he started to great city. He had an offer and I was helping with a business plan. And then I just thought, this is a great idea.

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And my children at the time were two and four. And I thought, boy, they really need more kids entertainment. So morphed into a company. We started off and the first person I met there, or the first client we had was the creator, a woman named Anne Wood. Producer from the, you know, was a school teacher originally, but really understood kids, had great ideas, had some shows already.

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But two years after we started working for her, she launched the Teletubbies and we were the managers of that for her. We managed the entire Americas. And so we had a real rocket ship ride with that great show, big brand we had. It was huge. All sorts of bank stories from there.

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And then I went right after that to work for another great show creator named Magnus Kevin. The day I left that job, I went to another one. He hadn't made a show, a guy from Iceland. But two years after I started working for him, we launched his idea, which was called Lazy Town, into a big show. Started on Nickelodeon, went all around the world, worked for him for almost ten years.

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So I got a really good background in show creators. And when I was at Lazy Town, I met the co founder of Kidstream, a guy named Jordan Jadenkin. He was working with us. He was doing a lot of big deals for us in the retail and promotions and licensing area, and him and I were traveling, always together, doing stuff. We were down in Latin America on a trip and we just decided we should start a company someday.

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And after Lazy Town kind know was sold off, we just launched this company and we were working with know, helping creators launch their shows. And suddenly Jordan came across from a big cable network, offered him an idea, hey, why don't you get us a, could you get us a kids channel? And he came back and we just said, okay, yeah, we could do that. And that was about 2016, and this was when streaming was just kind of getting going. And next thing you know, we put our heads together and just started working.

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And we launched in January. 217. Nice. And it wasn't really so intentional, but we had a real background, always working with independent great kid shows from around the world. So we had a really good network there.

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And that's kind of what the fun of it is for me, is working, finding really good creators, bringing their stuff and putting it on this channel. And that's what I spend probably at least half my job doing, is looking at kids tv and talking with them about new shows and evaluating them. But I rely a lot on the producer or the creator, because today, in today's world, there's a lot of stuff out there that kids may like and it may be good or it may not be good, but you can't always trust. Just because a kid likes it or a child likes it doesn't mean it's necessarily good for them. It's kind of like junk food.

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They may be attracted to some junk food. So I rely a lot on producers, really good creators. There's so many of them out there that are really talented writers and animation companies. So we rely a lot on them. We really vet our shows to make sure they're really good for kids and not just popular for kids, not just something they're attracted to, but something that's really good for them too.

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Right. Because what we were talking about when I was like, no, I want to record this is that age group that you target was, what? Two to nine? Two to nine. And their brains are still developing during that time.

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And they're so impressionable. And when they see somebody that they look up to, because we were talking about the commercials and how the commercials can just be a bad influence on kids, but they look up to it and they think that it's okay. And the same thing. They're watching a show, even if it's a kid show or any show, and you hear somebody, they're idolizing this character and you hear them swear or making bad decisions. They think that that's okay.

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They don't understand what's right and what's wrong. Exactly, Sandy. And even the type of humor, there's some sort of shows that we avoid that have kind of a very popular but mean spirited humor, we'll call it. Right. I was talking to a mother I just happened to meet and she said, well, I don't let my children watch this show anymore because he starts not one of our shows, but a show was pretty popular because after he watches it, he's really mean to me.

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And it's because they imitate things. So you're right. We wouldn't take a show even if it was very popular that we felt was like that. And we look at things that are enriching. But you're right, they're very impressionable.

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I take it as a huge responsibility to put anything on our channel because you're right. They're so smart, these young kids. I was just with some classrooms with first and second graders and they're so smart at that age and yet they're so innocent and so impressionable too. Yeah, that's right. And here's the thing.

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I know for me, and I shared very little pieces of my story before we hit record. I know for me, while my childhood wasn't awful, there were parts of it that were so tragic that the last thing any parent wants is their child to go through that. So here's the thing. Kids only have one chance to be a kid. That's it.

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And once they, you know, what do they say? Really? Your brain everything you've learned up to the age of twelve. And now, folks, I am not a psychologist, don't have my medical degree, but I do know that they say that up until the age of twelve, your brain is still learning a lot of decisions about life and behavior and things like that. And so why not give your child every opportunity?

00:13:46
And this is something that is so simple. I was so excited to talk to you today about this because I just think it's incredible. These kids, they deserve that. They deserve to have their brains be molded in a healthy way. You're absolutely right.

00:14:02
And role models, even if they're characters that act towards others and they're kind and they're not in favor of. They stand up to a bully or whatever, these producers and creators that produce shows, a lot of the good ones are really good at that and they take it very seriously. So I can't say I'm the one who creates these shows, but I value what goes into them and what they stay away from. That's why we source shows from all over the world, not just from the US. We're bringing in shows from Australia, Canada, the UK.

00:14:38
France is some amazing animation that comes out of France. So we're constantly looking at good shows. I mean, we have a great. One of our best suppliers, I would say our partners in content is the Jim Henson company, of course, an american company. We have some of their classic movies and shows, but also some of their new ones.

00:15:00
So they're an incredible producer. We're launching one of the first, it's called Billy Bunny's Animal show, and it was the first show that Kermit the frog was ever on. So I got my hands on that. I'm like, wow, I'm going to put that up. And the music is amazing.

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It's like a little mini movie. It's like 45 minutes. So that we're putting out. And we also have one of their real old shows called Emmett Otter's jug band Christmas, which goes back to the 70s. So that's kind of where we are.

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But we love their new shows. Jim Henson's production company is still cranking out great shows. We have Sid the science kid. We have a show called Dot that's amazing, about a little girl who's very tech savvy. So that's another example of a producer from here in the US that we really like to work with.

00:15:52
I love that. Yeah, I was going through looking at some of the shows and I saw that there was a science show and I'm like, that's incredible. When you think of subjects like science, you're exposing children to things like that at a young age. That is going to be so valuable for.

00:16:13
A. We have a show that we're the only ones in the US, I believe, that have it called bits and Bob, and it's bits and her younger brother Bob are two siblings, of course, who love making things and going on imaginative adventures with their toys. But it's in the background teaching engineering, believe it or not, concepts of engineering, kids. So it's not got an engineering course, but in every episode there's a little two minute thing at the end where they can do little things at home, too, after they watch the episode. What was done in the episode is kind of explained in a way that a parent could do something really simple at home with the kids, too.

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So education is great, and if you make it fun, it's not education for them. It's got to be entertaining first. You can't fool a child either. They're too smart. And if it's not fun and entertaining, they're not going to watch it.

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Their attention span is just going to. Be like, you can't fool them. You can fool an adult, you can't fool a kid. We have arts and craft shows, science and different, a lot of literacy kind of shows. We have a show called the book Hungry Bears in which shared reading is really featured, where each episode they take a book and a lot of them are very popular books from some great publishing partners like Simon and Schuster and, and Scholastic.

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We have great books. And the bears, these four bears sit around and share a book together. And this is for kids that aren't reading yet younger, because kids don't start reading initially, their reactions to books are where someone reads to them. So we have that show, which is a really special show that we have. We have some shows that are really push but encourage healthy living.

00:18:06
Lazy Town is one. That was the one I worked on. But we also have a new one called Ollie, the boy who became what he ate. And him and his little sister are always going on adventures. And believe it or not, each episode has a vegetable or a piece of fruit that's featured in it, whether it's avocado or a blueberry.

00:18:23
And it's amazing. We have 52 of these. So each one is a fun little episode. And in the background, they're getting to know about fruit and vegetables. Oh, my gosh, I love it.

00:18:34
So where can parents have access to kids stream? Well, please check us out on our website. It's the easiest thing where you can see all the places you can get us, which is kidstream tv, and that's K-I-D stream. Like the stream. One word, kidstream tv.

00:18:56
But just so parents know, if you have Amazon prime, which a lot of people do, we're an Amazon prime video channel. That's a great way to get us, too. We're also available if you have Cox or comcast speak into the remote and say kids stream, and it will show up there. We're available in Roku. But when you buy us through the App Store, the Android, the Google Play Store, or the Apple Store, you can also have a version that you can take around with you and put it on your tv or also have it on your phones with you on your iPads.

00:19:34
A lot of young children these days are watching shows on iPads versus tv, so it's nice to have it that way, too. All the services do know Amazon prime is really good that way, too. Prime video channels. So, yeah, we're there. We're also looking in the future, you can find us.

00:19:53
We're doing a partnership with a company you might have heard of called Curiosity Stream, which is great more for adults. It's got documentaries and biographies and nature shows. It was started by the gentleman who started the original Discovery Channel, and we're going to be in their bundle, so they're going to offer us when you buy them in a bundle coming next year. So that's another place to see us. That's fantastic.

00:20:19
Oh, my gosh. I love, love what you're doing. Like I said, I wish it was around 20 years ago when my son was a toddler and wanting to watch shows and, yeah, they know how to work that remote, too, so you got to be careful. Yeah, that's another thing. You won't get in any trouble here.

00:20:39
If they're on a bigger network that has adult shows and things, you don't know where they might go. They might start out here and they're pretty good with the remote, as you said, and they could be in some places that are pretty scary or inappropriate, but not in kids stream. There's nothing that you would be. Even stuff for the older range, the six to nine, is not inappropriate for the two, the three year old. So we don't have anything scary.

00:21:04
No violence. That's awesome. In today's world, we need this because the kids just, like I said, kids only have one chance to be a kid, and they need to be developed in a healthy environment. And I just love what you're doing. Is there anything else you'd like to share with the audience before we close.

00:21:27
Just. There's just so many great shows. I could talk about them all. Have a. We have a show called Goodron, the Viking Princess.

00:21:34
That is, it's live action shot in Scotland where this little girl is a Viking, her father's a Viking, and you think, boy, that can't do vikings. But it's done really with beautiful nature. We have one called curious crafting, brand new, out of Canada. We do crafting stuff. So I could just talk about them all day.

00:21:53
You'd have to stop me. Dean the sheep, a famous show from Ardman animation. We love Ardman. Another great partner. One of the best animation studios in the world.

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So we're doing that. We have some great things coming. I'm bringing in a show that I can't announce yet because I haven't signed it yet, but we'll be the only ones in the US with it. It's produced by the animation studio called McKinnon and Sandee that did the animation for Pinocchio, the one that just won the Academy award. And that's a really special show.

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And we also have some other big shows. Oh, I'm launching a show I can tell you about this really fun called Wildwoods. It's going to be launching this month. It's actually a Sasquatch, a friendly Sasquatch called Cooper, and he has a little friend named Poppy who's a sugar glider. And it used to be on Hulu.

00:22:44
Hulu had it, but Hulu backed away from kids tv and we scooped that one up. So we're going to be launching that. It's a really fun show, too. And it's done kind of with costume characters and puppetry. It's really a beautiful show.

00:22:58
You could have to stop me. I love the shows that we have, and we just have all sorts of ones that kids can find. We don't have algorithms where some services push shows at you. We don't do that. We let kids find what they want to find.

00:23:14
We don't track anybody. We don't track their behavior. So it's really a nice place to explore. And you never know what kids are going to be attracted to. So we have all sorts of stuff, but it's all really safe and enriching.

00:23:28
That's what I was thinking. It's a safe place for kids. And it's quality. We go for the high quality production values. That's what we're looking for.

00:23:38
Because, like you said, they have to be entertained. And if they're entertained, they can be educated at the same tIme. Exactly. Especially at this age. Like you said, they're so impressionable and so smart.

00:23:49
I love it. We really appreciate having this way to talk to your audience and congratulations on what you're doing. Sandy. Your podcast is really growing. It's hard in that business.

00:24:03
I know we're really appreciative to be with you and so fun to be on one of the few big growing podcasts in the country. So we hope to do more things we could do. We'd love to. Thank you. Thank you so much.

00:24:18
I so appreciate you and thank you everyone for listening today.

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