Sony Pictures Television has relaunched its Octonauts and Friends YouTube channel to deliver a wider selection of content for kids ages three to eight under the new Kidzuko brand. 

The channel, which went live yesterday and already has 377,000 subscribers, curates content from the SPT-Kids catalogue, including Octonauts (pictured), Peter Rabbit, The Creature Cases and Chico Bon Bon: Monkey with a Tool Belt. And the plan is to roll out a wide variety of formats based on the studio division’s IPs, ranging from livestreams and full episodes, to playlists and YouTube shorts. 

“As the entertainment landscape continues to evolve, digital has become a key pillar of our approach to launching and building IPs because of the increasing time that kids are spending consuming content on YouTube,” says Joe D’Ambrosia, EVP and GM of SPT-Kids.

Earlier this year, Qustodio’s annual report for 2023 showed usage growth for YouTube among kids and teens globally. This demo spent 96 minutes a day on YouTube Kids last year (up from 84 minutes in 2022), and 70 minutes a day on YouTube (up from 67 minutes).

Other companies that have made big moves on the platform in recent months are Banijay Kids & Family, which rolled out 12 channels and rebranded its YouTube catalogue as ZeeKay; and Dr. Seuss Enterprises, which has tapped digital video specialist Little Dot Studios to produce new content for its channel.