Kidoodle: video streaming for kids

Times Reporter  

 

Has your child ever pressed the buttons on the TV remote and accidently flicked to a not-so-PG show? Do you worry about what they watch and want to be sure they are getting age appropriate, fun and educational programming? Mike Lowe from Calgary, president of A Parent Media Corp., created a video streaming service for those same reasons. Kidoodle, a program similar to Netflix in idea, but created 100 per cent for children ages 0-12. 

Besides focusing on children there also isn’t any content on there that you wouldn’t want your children to watch, and even if there are some shows that have human conflict, like G.I. Joe for example, you can still turn off individual shows, which you can’t do on other video streaming sites. 

“If you allow your children to browse Kidoodle, on the content side you know that they’re just going to be watching shows that are approved for children,” said Lowe.

Kidoodle also offers each child a chance to create a profile. They are able to choose their own avatar, and have their own account and match shows to what they like to watch, not what everyone wants to watch. Up to five kids can have their own profile per Kidoodle account.  

“The nice thing for parents is if you have a couple of kids you can choose content that is different for each child based on age,” said Lowe.

“They get their own account, they get their own avatar, they get to choose their own theme colour and backgrounds so it makes them feel like they are a little more grown up and they have their very own service.”

Lowe, who spent some time in the media industry, was watching his son and thinking about how he would grow up digitally connected. Before leaving on a trip one day Lowe removed all of the inappropriate channels from his television after he found out his son had found a way to access them through the remote. 

“When I came back that Saturday morning we had a regular routine of watching Saturday cartoons. I had gotten up to get a cup of coffee and quickly heard the soundtrack change from Dora the Explorer to something that wasn’t Dora and realized that he had ordered an adult pay movie. The thing that frustrated me was that I had removed them previously,” said Lowe.

He had thought he had protected his child but the cable company had pushed out new additional channels unknown to him. The next incident that spurred him on is when they were planning a family trip to Hawaii.  

“My son was very interested in volcanoes and how Hawaii was formed. We were watching a lot of clips on YouTube and the third clip of volcanoes that we watched had an ad before it and that ad happened to be a horror movie trailer, and it scared him so for three days he didn’t sleep,” said Lowe. 

These were only the events he personally witnessed, but it was enough for him to decide something needed to change. He started thinking that with technology changing and with kids having access to all these different devices, something needed to be out there to protect them in what they are watching.  

Kidoodle has over 3,000 shows available to its viewers, providing a mix of classic cartoons, entertainment content and national geographic and science shows. 

“The content that is on there now we just really focused on high quality classics and shows that are popular right now, and of course going after the top level National Geographic and learning type of shows,” said Lowe. 

Kidoodle officially launched on Jan. 1 and already there are subscribers all across North America. Kidoodle costs $4.99 per month and subscribers can sign up by going to www.kidoodle.tv.