US - Dominant preschool players take "if it ain't broke" approach to fall skeds

More episodes of current hits rule on Nick Jr.

Lay of the land: Nick Jr. airs on Nickelodeon from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. weekdays and targets the two to five demo with a goal of providing the wee audience with educational content in a playful way. It currently reache more than 96 million US homes and boasts some of the most popular preschool series on TV in the US, including Dora the Explorer and The Wonder Pets!

The goal: Put simply, Brown Johnson, president of animation at Nickelodeon/MTVN Kids & Family Group, wants to keep things humming along. Nick Jr. already has the lion's share of the preschool audience in the US and is looking to continue its dominance by mining its current stable of iconic characters and adding very little in the way of new programming.

The strategy: Johnson says that the net will continue to stick with its winning formula of peppering entertainment-driven series with a hint of educational flavoring. One new addition this year is long-form movies based on Nick Jr. series that will play in prime time but be preceded by a DVD launch. For example, Dora Saves the Snow Princess is a full-length made-for-TV movie that was released on DVD at the end of September; it will also hit Nick airwaves in a prime-time slot closer to the holiday season. Similarly, The Wonder Pets! Save the Nutcracker lands on mass retailers' shelves on October 7 and will be broadcast around Christmas.

The standouts: Three words here: Dora the Explorer. The megahit is still going strong and is easily the number-one television series for kids two to five so far in 2008, with more than 21 million viewers watching the series in a one-month period in May 2008, according to Nielsen metrics. Last year's newcomer Yo Gabba Gabba!, meanwhile, proved to be as big a breakout hit as the net had hoped it would be, delivering an average of 734,000 kids ages two to five for each telecast last May. And The Wonder Pets! ranked third amongst all preschool programs with Hispanic preschoolers, drawing roughly 12.7 million viewers during that same month.

Pulling in numbers like this, it's not surprising that Johnson is opting not to tweak the schedule in any way for the upcoming season. "This year is more about new episodes of the existing hits," she says. "We don't want to make room in our schedule for a new series at this point."

Delivering eyeballs: Nick Jr. is going to stick with its proven marketing strategy of cross-promoting series with Nickelodeon and developing games for nickjr.com that tout special programming events like the aforementioned prime-time specials. Promotions seem to be pretty much taking care of themselves lately, as the presence of Nick Jr. characters continues to proliferate in the marketplace, thanks to ever-growing consumer products programs based on the likes of Dora and co. As Johnson herself says, "I have to admit, there is nothing new in terms of promotion for Nick Jr."

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