Jul 5, 2023

U.S. companies own nearly half of Europe's children's channels

A new report released by the European Audiovisual Observatory (EAO) reveals that almost half (48%) of European children's TV channels are owned by US companies.

Five of the top ten European television groups belong to American parent companies. Television groups with the most regional operations include Warner Brothers Discovery (46), The Walt Disney Company (44), Paramount (41), and Comcast (36).

Nevertheless, in Europe, children's content represents only about 3% of all programming broadcast by television broadcasters, making it one of the smallest categories tracked by the EAO.

U.S. companies, on the other hand, feature portfolios that are many times larger than those of their European competitors and devote a much higher percentage (12%) to children's content.

More than a third of Europe's SVOD (39%) and TVOD (33%) are owned by U.S. companies.

Eight of the top 10 on-demand providers in Europe are U.S. companies. The most represented among them by region are Netflix (40), Amazon Prime Video (39), Comcast (37), and The Walt Disney Company (35).

In Europe, children's programming represents 4% of the SVOD catalog. While the percentage of children's programming in the catalogs of U.S. TV broadcasters was much higher than that in Europe, the same cannot be said for streaming distributors. This 4% figure is the same for both international and domestic SVOD providers.