NBCUniversal-owned preschool net Sprout and Corus Entertainment’s Treehouse have acquired rights to an upcoming series fronted by Australian musical group The Wiggles, entitled Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle.
The deal is part of two separate multi-year licensing agreements inked with ABC Commercial that also gives Sprout and Treehouse rights to existing TV series Ready, Steady, Wiggle!, which will begin airing on weekdays on both networks this week. A large back-catalog was also acquired by the US and Canadian nets, including exclusive rights to studio-recorded albums The Wiggles Meet the Orchestra, Taking Off!, Rock and Roll Preschool, Apples & Bananas and more. Altogether, the agreements span more than 60 hours of content across each network.
Sprout currently reaches 58 million US homes. Treehouse, meanwhile, is the number-one watched preschool network in Canada and is in more than 6.2 million homes across the country.
ABC Commercial picked up exclusive global licensing rights for the group’s complete catalog of content last year as a part of a multi-million-dollar five-year license.
The Wiggles has experienced a resurgence in popularity lately, with sold-out concert sales and strong ratings for Ready, Steady, Wiggle. Capitalizing on that, last year Hulu made a deal for Ready, Steady, Wiggle’s exclusive debut in the US. The group formed in Sydney in 1991, and its current members are Anthony Field, Lachlan Gillespie, Simon Pryce and Emma Watkins.