Wiggles arrive at Universal Kids & Treehouse

The US’s Universal Kids and Treehouse in Canada have bought rights to the latest series from Australian kids band The Wiggles.

The separate multi-year licence deals hand NBCUniversal (NBCU)’s Universal Kids and Corus Entertainment’s Canuck cable channel, Treehouse, rights to range of Wiggles TV shows.

The deals come ten months after ABC Commercial, the sales arm of Australian pubcaster the ABC, acquired full rights to the Wiggles catalogue.

Toplining is the upcoming Wiggle Wiggle Wiggle series, plus both seasons of Ready, Steady, Wiggle! and back catalogue shows such as The Wiggles Meet the Orchestra, Taking Off!, Rock and Roll Preschool and Apples & Bananas.

In total, the deals comprise more than 60 hours of programming.

The Wiggles have been touring the world internationally and making preschool television for more than 25 years. ABC has been pushing for new local and international deals since snapping up rights last year.

In the US, the shows will air on Sprout, which is now a block on cable channel Universal Kids. The latter replaced the former as NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment Lifestyle Networks’ kids channel brand in May.

This came after NBCU acquired DreamWorks Animation, adding series such as All Hail King Julien and DreamWorks Dragons: Riders of Berk in the process.