Big players in traditional TV still failing to see YouTube opportunity, El Reino Infantil boss claims

Roberto ‘Kuky’ Pumar

CONTENT AMERICAS: The traditional television industry still does not perceive the opportunity that YouTube represents for the business, according to Roberto ‘Kuky’ Pumar, CEO of YouTube channel El Reino Infantil.

El Reino Infantil (which translates as ‘children’s kingdom’) is the most popular Spanish-language channel on the Google-owned video platform, with a turnover of “between US$20m and US$30m a year,” Pumar said.

However, according to Pumar, the channel does not bill even 30% of what it could for its content. “This is the reality and this is a product of the fact that the big players still do not perceive us.”

Popular for its children’s videos on YouTube, El Reino Infantil has been taking steps in recent years to get closer to the traditional business, licensing its content to platforms, acquiring third-party content for its own network of channels and launching a FAST channel.

The company’s next step will be to close alliances with animation studios to generate new content both for its own platforms and for more traditional sectors of the industry. “What we are doing now is to start creating alliances with big animation studios that are already looking for us to do joint developments,” Pumar said in Miami.

“We already have two really important projects underway, where we will undoubtedly put all the digital and online experience we have and our partners will put their knowledge in distribution to also penetrate strongly in the broadcasting business and start developing third-generation projects.”

Pumar added that, despite decades as an active and relevant platform, YouTube has only begun to attract the attention of large companies in the audiovisual industry in recent months and years, and said that “from now on there will be many ‘children’s kingdoms.’”

The Argentinian executive highlighted also highlighted the differences in approach between  YouTube content creators and traditional TV companies.

To nurture its children’s content grid, El Reino Infantil relies on a team of analysts and metrics that measure the success of each episode or individual content, thus avoiding commitments to programming and content in the long term, Pumar said.

If a video generates enough interest on the channel, a next video in the same series is sought or created, and so on, making it a somewhat staggered process compared with traditional TV commissioning.

“Those who produce for broadcasting think very differently to those who create for social networks, and we often see that a product that is excellent on YouTube does not work as well on traditional channels,” said Pumar.

However, Pumar stressed that the main players in the industry have now started to show much greater interest in YouTube and channels like his. “It is a traditional industry, and it’s very important that studios are open-minded to understand that suddenly an outsider like us can collaborate a lot and create what will be the great success of tomorrow.”