TiVo’s Case For KidZone

TiVo officially takes the wraps off KidZone today, though if you’ve been paying attention you certainly know of it and may already have it. What you may not know is that TiVo does indeed conduct market research. To support the KZ roll-out, they’ve publicly released selected results of a recent telephone survey. Not surprisingly, the majority (62%) of 1,000 participants are concerned with what children watch on television. Additionally, TiVo builds the case for KidZone with the discovery that 81% of households do not use any form of parental controls and 55% receive no content guidance. The questions that weren’t asked in this survey (surely, they were asked during development) which interest me are what percent of concerned parents would use a service like KidZone and how much would they be willing to pay?

TiVo-Ipsos Research Survey Reveals Huge Concerns About What Kids Watch on TV Over the Summer

ALVISO, CA – June 15, 2006 – TiVo (NASDAQ: TIVO), the creator of and the leader in television services for digital video recorders, announced today the availability of TiVo KidZone, a revolutionary new service enhancement that for the first time assures parents that quality children’s programming is always on when their children turn on their television sets.

The launch of TiVo KidZone comes at a time when there is a remarkable surge in children’s daytime television viewing over the summer, which is also a time when TV viewing is even more unsupervised by parents and is a source of their growing concern. This fact is highlighted in the release today of a new survey of 1,000 Americans, sponsored by TiVo and conducted with leading international research firm, Ipsos Research, showing that 64 percent of parents of children under age 18 are concerned that their children will see television programming that does not reflect their family’s values, especially as many of the country’s children are beginning their summer vacation from school.

“TiVo KidZone answers the many concerns of parents revealed in this survey, by empowering them with a breakthrough new service and by, also giving children a continuous array of engaging, high-quality programming to choose from whenever they turn on their television sets,” said Tom Rogers , President and CEO of TiVo. “TiVo KidZone is offering families a personalized TV area where parents’ own judgments and the recommendations of widely respected national family media review organizations such as Common Sense Media are easily and safely applied to deliver the best children’s television programming.”

“With a number of parents of children under 18 saying they are nervous about what their kids are watching but 81 percent saying they do not utilze any blocking technology that prevents programming with a certain rating from coming into their homes, it is clear that parents need an easy to use service like TiVo KidZone to ensure that quality TV is always on at their house,” said Joe Miller, Vice President, Sales and Affiliate Marketing for TiVo.

TiVo KidZone is based on TiVo ’s easy-to-use interface and provides all parents the freedom and flexibility to easily find and select the television programming they deem most appropriate for their families while also making it simple to easily block any programs and channels they do not want their children to view. Announced in March 2006, TiVo KidZone allows subscribers to:

• Choose from entire menus of shows recommended by a variety of leading non-profit organizations focused on children and media including Common Sense Media, Parents’ Choice Foundation and the Parents Television Council and set automatic recordings based on those recommended menus.
• Easily add or subtract specific programs or channels to further customize what is available for children.
• Lock out all other programming or channels that are not specified for TiVo KidZone from access by children, while making all channels available when a parent wants to watch television.

Highlights of the TiVo-Ipsos Research Include:

TiVo and Ipsos Research conducted the survey from June 5-7, 2006. It underscores the demand and need for TiVo KidZone, which is now available to all new TiVo subscribers and will be rolled out to all current TiVo Series2 subscribers as an automatic software download, included free with their service. Analysis of ratings data from Nielsen shows that actual daytime television viewership of children, ages 6 – 11, increases over 150 percent during the summer. In addition, adult and adult female viewing patterns during that time remain unchanged, implying that much of that increase in children’s viewership is even more unsupervised than usual.

• 64 percent of parents of children under 18 say they are concerned (either very or somewhat concerned) that their children will see TV that does not reflect their family’s values or isn’t safe to watch.
• 55 percent of parents of children under 18 say they don’t receive any guidance in this regard, whereas just 19 percent turn to newspapers, television or magazines to help inform those choices.
• 81 percent of all Americans do not utilze any blocking technology that prevents programming with a certain rating from coming into their homes.
• 62 percent of all Americans were concerned about what children are watching on television, which compares with 64 percent of parents of children under 18 who said they were concerned. This is a remarkable state of consensus that reflects a consistency of viewpoints among all Americans on this issue.

TiVo KidZone will be included as part of the standard TiVo® service fee, and is available at consumer electronics retailers and online.

Subscribers can learn more about these features and sign up for the priority list at www.tivo.com/priority to ensure the features are delivered to their boxes before the full rollout of the service. For more information, please visit www.tivo.com/kidzone.