Sky orders kids Duck Quacks, Big Cats

Sky has ordered kids-skewed versions of its Sky 1 panel show Duck Quacks Don’t Echo and wildlife series Big Cats, as the European paycaster pushes further into original children’s programming.

Like its older skewing parent series, Duck Quacks Don’t Echo: Kids will be a science panel show from Magnum Media, while Big Cats – An Amazing Animal Family comes from Offspring Films and will be presented by Patrick Aryee. Both will be available through the Sky Kids app.

Sky is also planning to create original series for kids from its Sky Sports channels, and create short-form content from leading multichannel networks. The 21^st Century Fox-backed pay TV provider is already working up a version of classic UK Claymation series Morph.

The Sky Kids App launched at the end of March as Sky’s most concerted effort to push into the kids TV space. This allows users to stream series from the likes of CBeebies, Cartoon Network and Disney, and play originals.

In the UK, 13 million episodes have been streamed to this point, and an option to download episodes to watch offline is being added on July 24.

Sky revealed it will launch the app in Germany and Austria “shortly” before being rolled out in Italy in early 2017.

“We’re really excited to be bringing even more original programming to Sky Kids as well as further improving the app,” said Lucy Murphy, Sky’s head of kids content. “The talented teams at Magnum Media and Offspring Films are creating kids versions of two of Sky 1’s most popular shows, Duck Quack’s Don’t Echo and Big Cats, An Amazing Animal Family.”

Murphy (pictured) joined Sky in September last year to helm the push into kids programming.