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Business Week takes a look at Disney’s planned overhaul of Disney.com. It appears that Disney is going after a MySpace, Web 2.0 kind of thing to improve stickiness.

I’m guessing (and hoping) that the bulk of this will be aimed at the older kids. I certainly don’t want my soon to be 4 year old adding friends to their MySpace page. But, part of the redesign does involve playhousedisney.com which currently lags behind NickJr.com.

Disney isn’t even second on the list in terms of stickiness, with the 55 minutes its Playhouse Disney site keeps kids around, less than the 70 minutes that users of Viacom’s Nick Jr. hang around for games, videos, and more. The site also lets kids “mash up” videos—that is, create their own videos by altering videos Viacom has given to them.

Without really a strong push from my wife or I, my kids do tend to favor NickJr.com, and especially the Wow Wow Wubbzy games. Still, they’re not hitting the site for 70 minutes at a crack (or even 55).

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If your kids are fans of The Wonder Pets, the first 10 episodes are now available for download from iTunes. Each episode can be had for $1.99.

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Nickelodeon announced today their strategy for new show development and launches across video games, internet, podcasts and other media. It also announced several parts of it’s production schedule going forward. Items relevant to the preschool set include:

• Downward Doghouse: Twenty episodes have been ordered for the show which is set to launch March 2007. The show aims to teach preschoolers about Chinese culture, much in the same vein as Dora the Explorer. The show aims to help kids understand their emotions and be mindful of the feelings of others.
• Wow Wow Wubbzy: Twenty-six episodes of the show have been ordered. Originally it was slated to debut in the fall of this year, but now appears to be set to premiere in 2007. The press release was corrected, and the show is still set to debut in 2006.
• New episodes of current shows slated for 2006-2007: On tap are 18 episodes of LazyTown, 20 episodes of The Backyardigans, and 20 episodes of Go Diego Go.

Nick also announced the Inkubator Lab. The Inkubators Lab will be dedicated to the development of original animated content made specifically for a diverse range of platforms, including broadband; wireless; portable video devices; online and gaming.

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Nickelodeon has made the entire first season of Dora the Explorer available on iTunes. Each of the 26 episodes can be purchased for $1.99. While $52 dollars to own the whole first season might be a little more than you care to spend, if your kids have a favorite episode it might not be a bad way to get it. In our house the episode of choice is Pablo’s Flute.

itunes, dora the explorer, nickelodeon

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