As competition in the streaming service market heats up, services are looking for ways to differentiate their offerings. One area of increased interest — especially in light of fierce competition from newcomer Disney+ — is how to make their services more family-friendly. On this front, Netflix today announced the rollout of new features for families, the Kids Activity Report and Family Profiles, while CBS All Access added a Kids Mode and other updates aimed at families.
Streamers for years have marketed their services toward families with children, not only because these customers will often pay for higher-priced tiers offering more simultaneous logins, but also because strong kids’ entertainment offerings helps to keep subscribers loyal.
Netflix has led on this front with investments in children’s programming and longtime support for parental controls, a “Kids” profile and more.
Today, the company says it’s testing new features to better improve the Netflix experience.
One is a new Kids Activity Report that provides parents with information about what their kids are streaming on Netflix.
This includes information about the child’s recently watched shows and interests, as well as suggested conversation topics and activities — like coloring pages or jokes — that parents can use to engage kids further. This could help those families where parents may not be clued in as to how kids are spending their time on Netflix — like those where the kids often watch independently or on their own device, for example.
It also arrives at a time when families are stuck at home due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has limited the options for kids’ entertainment, leading to increased screen time. A feature that turns something parents worry about — too much screen time — into offline activities for family engagement could help this increased Netflix usage been seen in a more positive light.
Netflix says the report, which is sent via email, is being tested globally in select markets.
Another test involves a Family Profile, which focuses on helping family members find programming they can all watch together. Like other profiles, the Family Profile would be accessed from the main screen with its own icon and maintain its own recommendations and watch lists, separate from an individual’s own profile.
Unlike a kids’ user profile, which has a specific age range depending on the settings, the Family Profile would feature a selection of titles that extend up to PG-13 for movies and TV-14 for shows.
This content can still be surprisingly hard to find these days, as much of what some streamers consider “family” viewing are titles that are actually aimed at little kids — titles that are often painful for full-grown adults to sit through, that is. Family-friendly profiles could instead include less of this preschool fare, perhaps and more of popular family titles like the recent hit, “Enola Holmes.”
Netflix suggested you also might find titles like the upcoming animated short “Canvas,” animated special “A Trash Truck Christmas” or live action family movie “We Can Be Heroes,” on a Family profile.
This test is also running globally, but only on the TV, Netflix says.
The Verge first reported on the tests.
“We’re always looking for new ways to improve the Netflix experience for members of all ages,” a Netflix spokesperson told TechCrunch about its new features. “We run these tests in different countries and for different periods of time — and only make them broadly available if people find them useful,” they said.
Of course, new family features could also help Netflix overcome some of the customer backlash against its service following the “Cuties” scandal earlier this year.
The French film and award winner was meant to be social commentary on the hypersexualization of children, but was condemned for exploiting children instead, possibly even denting Netflix subscriber growth. (The controversy was heavily tied to the QAnon #SavetheChildren conspiracy, too, though not all customers objecting to the film knew they were participating in the broader movement driven by QAnon.)
Netflix was not the only streamer to launch family-friendly features today.
In addition, CBS All Access today announced the rollout of new family-friendly features of its own. However, it’s playing catch-up with other streamers with its launches.
The company says it will add a new feature that allows families to create up to six profiles per account and manage those using a “Kids Mode” option. This allows parents to create profiles that limit content to younger and older children based on content ratings. In addition, the service’s existing parental controls (the PIN-based controls) will also be available across these new profiles.
The features arrived alongside the addition of nearly 800 more episodes of kids’ content, including Nick Jr. favorites like “Paw Patrol,” “Blaze and the Monster Machines,” “Blue’s Clues,” “Bubble Guppies,” “Dora the Explorer,” “Shimmer and Shine,” and others. The service already had more than 1,000 episodes of children’s programming before the new shows arrived, including “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs,” “Danger Mouse,” “Lassie,” “George of the Jungle” and “Mr. Magoo.” A SpongeBob spinoff, “Kamp Koral,” will arrive next year, along with “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run.”
In related news, a top streaming platform, Fire TV, is also looking to better serve multi-person households and families with its latest changes.
Fire TV today offers a platform for engaging with streaming apps, games and other content, but organizes this into an interface complete with tailored recommendations and other features. Its redesign, first announced in September, rolls out starting today.
Amazon redesigns Fire TV, introduces new Fire TV Stick and low-cost Fire TV Stick Lite
The update brings a brand-new look-and-feel to Fire TV, which now reorganizes the navigation and improves how it makes recommendations. But one of the bigger changes is that Fire TV users — including kids — will now each get their own profile for a more personalized experience.
All the updates are rolling out starting today. Netflix’s tests, however, won’t reach all users at this time.
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