An agreement was signed yesterday between LazyTown and the BBC, Britain’s largest media conglomerate, for the sale of broadcasting rights to the television programs about LazyTown for the next five years. The programs will be shown on the BBC, but the BBC will also follow the shows on the children’s cable channels CBBC and CBeebies. It is estimated that the shows will start on October 3 and that they will reach 57 million TV viewers.
This is the right time to show 35 TV shows about LazyTown that have already been produced. Filming of new episodes will begin in January. The value of the contract is confidential. The BBC operates, among other things, eight television channels, including CBBC and CBeebies, the UK’s most popular children’s television channels. The BBC reaches 57 million television viewers in the UK and has a 95.6% market share in the television market. Around 76% of all children in the UK watch the BBC.
Michael Carrington, head of children’s content at the BBC, says the station has a great responsibility as a government station and, among other things, needs to take into account the government’s health policy. Because of this, the BBC would have teamed up with its main competitor, the television channel Nickelodeon Junior, for shows on LazyTown. The stations will thus both show the programs in the UK. He says that it is extremely rare for the BBC to cooperate in this way. However, this is not a matter of competition, but of public interest.
He pointed out that there are more than 12 million children in the UK, of which around one million are suffering from obesity. “The problem is so big,” Carrington said at the signing of the contract yesterday. “We wanted to respond to this, but not by preaching to the children, but by encouraging them to adopt a healthy diet and exercise. When we started to think about this, Magnús Scheving and LazyTown came to our attention and he had spent a whole decade developing the idea. It was therefore straightforward to collaborate with him, as the shows meet the BBC’s requirements for children’s content, that is to educate, entertain and inform,” said Carrington, adding that he was convinced of the show’s success in the UK.
Creates great value
Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson, the President of Iceland, was present at the signing of the agreement yesterday. He said that he had followed the progress of LazyTown for a long time and admitted that he had not always been as convinced as Magnús Scheving about the ideas he had about LazyTown. Ólafur said that a few years ago, for example, few people would have believed that Magnús would sell the idea to the BBC, as is the case now. Ólafur said he had great respect for the BBC for decades and said he was excited to see how the collaboration between these two great institutions, LazyTown and the BBC, would develop.
Ólafur said that the biggest health problems of our time, obesity, diabetes and other diseases, can be attributed to unhealthy diet and lack of exercise. These diseases cost societies enormous amounts of money. Encouraging children to improve their diet and exercise could save big money. Thus, the value that LazyTown created would be much greater than just the market value.
LazyTown is currently shown in 46 countries, but they will be 78 by the end of the year. Magnús Scheving, the creator of the series, said that no children’s television program in the world had ever received such a rapid spread. An announcement from LazyTown states that the agreement is a major milestone and the key to LazyTown’s popularity in the UK in the coming years. The agreement follows the very good success of LazyTown in Germany and Norway, where viewing figures have shown up to 57% of all children between the ages of 2 and 11 watching.
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