Kidscreen has confirmed that Paramount+ has named former Nickelodeon development VP Nathan Schram as its new VP of kids & family. In this role, he will oversee all of the streamer’s animated and live-action projects for a demographic range spanning preschool to young adults.

Nathan Schram, courtesy of Paramount.

Schram has more than 14 years of experience in kids & family programming. He joined Nick in 2018 and worked his way up on the development team to eventually land at the VP level, managing an animation slate for kids ages six to 11. During his time with the kidsnet, Schram worked on titles including Big Nate, The Loud House and Max & the Midknights. He also optioned 20 book properties for adaptation, as well as developing properties with franchise potential—such as Baby Shark’s Big Show!—for Nick’s linear network and SVOD platform.

Paramount+ has more than 77 million subscribers and a growing kids & family library that includes popular franchises PAW Patrol, SpongeBob SquarePants, Peppa Pig and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Does Schram’s appointment mean there’ll be a new push for Paramount+ kids originals? In years past, Paramount’s streamer did greenlight some children’s programming, including Star Trek: Prodigy and a Dora the Explorer live-action film. But last year, the platform removed 10 kids shows from its library. So while Schram’s hire seems to signal that there could be growth on the way, it’s still too early to say whether it marks a reversal of the company’s previous strategy of shedding content to cut costs.

Obviously, it’s a chaotic time for Paramount Skydance’s kids teams, which have taken some major hits amid a wave of post-merger layoffs that has affected even top Paramount talent. Ramsey Naito, previously believed to be staying on as head of Paramount Animation, has exited the company. And Nickelodeon and Awesomeness TV’s Shauna Phelan and Nickelodeon brand and content insights SVP Andrea Strauss are just a few other heavyweight layoffs that Kidscreen has reported on in recent days.

Photo by Romain Malaunay on Unsplash.