Jonathan Abraham

Canada’s Zone·tv has hired former Guru Studio business development exec Jonathan Abraham as it looks to broaden its focus beyond AVOD platforms into branded digital products for kids.

Zone·tv owns and operates zone·ify, an AVOD service that features multiple channels, including several for kids and teens. The company has plenty of short-form content, series and films for a broad audience in its library, and now it’s looking to add more long-form programming and content for kids and families, says CEO Jeff Weber. In that vein, its most recent pick-ups are Akili and Me from Ubongo and Cosmos-Maya’s The Adventures of Vir.

As VP of sales and business development, one of the kid-focused products Abraham will be working to build out is Zone·tv’s Holiday Countdown app. Broadcasters such as Canada’s Bell Media and America’s Xfinity perennially feature the Christmas and Halloween versions of this smart TV app on their services. It offers on-demand holiday movies, read-along books, games, surveys and puzzles for kids, and the flagship feature of the Christmas app is the Santa Tracker, which shows the big man’s progress around the world on December 24 and 25.

Holiday Countdown sees more than 150 million minutes of usage per year, and families come back to it multiple times during the holiday season, says Weber. Zone·tv wants to offer these impressions to advertising clients in branded entertainment hubs featuring well-known kids IPs.

“We have the numbers on Holiday Countdown, and now the goal is to open this up to meet a demand for producers seeking a more engaging advertising experience,” says Weber. “We’re looking to gamify the consumer experience with brands.”

The company has also previously created virtual pop-up channels for brands that viewers can find through the programming guides on their smart TVs. So far, it has made channels for Sesame Street and Space Jam: A New Legacy, letting users access episodes, games, quizzes, a merch store and digital movie rentals. A business goal going forward will be to do more of these custom channel executions for other kids entertainment brands, says Weber.

Abraham has amassed a lot of experience in the global kids TV industry, having worked in sales at Portfolio Entertainment, 9 Story Media Group, Spin Master, Guru and Kidscreen. And Zone·tv hopes to leverage his connections in the market as it scales up on multiple fronts.

“We have a focus on the US and Canada, but in the first quarter of 2023, we’re looking at reaching international companies,” Weber explains. “Our customers used to be the TV operators, and now we’re looking to make the studios and content-makers our partners.”