Daniel Tiger’s Digital Strategy
Background of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood
Daniel Tigers Neighborhood was first aired on PBS September 3rd, 2012. Which was 11 years after Mister Rodger’s Neighborhood ended. Also, 9 years after Fred Rodger’s death. The show is based on the “Neighborhood of the Make-Believe from Mister Rodger’s”.
At the programs launch party, Dorothy Daniel (manager) had given a tiger puppet to Fred Rodgers. He then named the tiger after the person who gave it to him, Daniel. The show then follows a 4 year old tiger, Daniel, and the viewers get to see his life from a child’s view. The show is all about helping children learn how to do things like counting, learning the abc’s, and teaching them social skills. The show is based for 2-5 year old’s, and uses very bright and engaging colors.
Engaging Characters
Throughout the show, Daniel introduces different friend characters he does adventures with. He has Miss Elaina, O the Owl, Katerina, and Prince Wednesday. Prince Wednesday is a human prince, who is friends with Daniel, and always throws the word “royal” into his sentences. O the Owl, is also a friend, and is completely blue. He only wears shoes as clothes, but is a very funny character. Katerina is a cat, and acts like a human while she likes to spin. Miss Elaina is a very happy character who is also imaginative. Each character has their own part in making the show what it is.
Study of Children Who Watch Daniel
A study by researchers at Texas Tech University were bound to prove that not all television shows are harmful to kids. The study overall had shown that children who watch Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood had higher levels of empathy, and were better in social situations. This was especially true for children at the age of 4, and living in low income housing. They also found that the parents bringing up conversations about different shows helped their social skills.
Daniel’s Songs
Through different songs, Daniel is able to reach his audience through different ways. Through one song, Use Your Words, Daniel and his friends are promoting children to use their word to express how they feel. During the song, he uses different complications where someone should speak up.
Another song, Saying I’m Sorry Is The First Step, is trying to encourage kids to say sorry for things that they do wrong. He then promotes then asking how to help the situation. Daniel and his friends create different scenarios for this video to encourage saying I'm sorry.
Attached below is another video of Daniel and Katerina introducing the idea of helping each other out.
The Problem
The children’s show Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood, is mainly streamed on PBS Kids. This creates an issue because a lot of kids aren’t raised on PBS yet alone know what it is. Many of the Disney and Nickelodeon kids shows are taking over, so there is rarely any awareness for the kids show Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood. There are also a lot of opinion on Daniel himself. According to Common Sense Media, many parents view Daniel as a “brat”, and explain how he throws tantrums about anything. They also bring up the point of how he gets mad about everything even if the problem isn’t big.
Digital Strategy
The goal of Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood show is to help children learn social skills, but also learning other things. Their goal is to gain more young viewers, and their parents. The company has their target audience and goals set already. The show should use more songs, and activities throughout their shows to keep the audience attention, and be able to have interaction throughout their viewings. They should conduct a more competitive analysis because there are becoming more and more children learning shows.
To fix the problems with the show, they could outreach more throughout all apps including TikTok because of how big it is now. They should add more interactive things for the children watching. Overall, they have a very good digital strategy for it’s viewers. The company should address the comments about how Daniel is a “whimp”, and how he is teaching children to be very unpleasant to be around.
The show could bring different influencers in episodes to engage the children more, and get the parents to like the show more. As said by Media Smarts. Daniel could be given more and harder tasks to accomplish instead of the little things. He needs to have bigger and deeper stories.
According to LinkedIn, children’s shows must know their audience, choose the right platform, and engage your audience. Through the PBS Kids website, there are many engaging activities for the children. Also as someone on LinkedIn pointed out, the cognitive needs are different throughout the ages. So some episodes will not meet the child’s needs. The show is currently on PBS and also running on the T.V., so the show does have a pretty big network. Just the downside of the other popular kids shows on Disney etc…
According to PBS Sponsorship Group, a show should target the parents more than the kid. Based off the parent allowing the child to watch the show.
Written by: Alexis Start