Articles

David Walliams Tops Kids Author Vote

David Walliams has been crowned the UK’s favourite children’s author by UK children and listeners to national children’s radio station Fun Kids.

The funnyman topped the Fun Kids Favourite Author vote, stealing the crown ahead of other popular authors including Roald Dahl, Julia Donaldson and J.K. Rowling.

Thousands of votes were cast in the poll and top 10 was revealed today, on World Book Day.

The Fun Kids Radio Favourite Author Top 10:

  1. David Walliams (World’s Worst Children author)
  2. Roald Dahl (who’s sold over 250m books)
  3. J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter author)
  4. Julia Donaldson (Writer of The Gruffalo and Room on the Broom)
  5. Jacqueline Wilson (Tracy Beaker and Hetty Feather writer)
  6. Michael Morpurgo (Previous children’s laureate and War Horse writer
  7. Enid Blyton (Famous Five and Noddy writer)
  8. Jeff Kinney (Diary of a Wimpy Kid author)
  9. Matt Haig (A Boy Called Christmas writer)
  10. Tom Fletcher (McFly singer and Christmasaurus author)

Bex Lindsay, Fun Kids Radio home-time presenter and host of the Fun Kids Book Club podcast said: “We’ve always known how popular David Walliams was with our listeners but we were astounded by the number of votes he managed to pull in. Reading is such a huge part of our listeners’ lives, it’s great to see their passion for so many authors and their books.”

211 different authors received at least one vote in the competition which, as well as successful new children’s authors like Greg James and Laura Ellen Anderson, also included votes for Mr Men author Richard Hargreaves and even a vote for William Shakespeare!

Fun Kids Radio is available across the UK on DAB Digital Radio, online at funkidslive.com or by asking a smart speaker to “Play Fun Kids”.

Nintendo: YO-KAI WATCH

Mission: Our challenge was to create an engaging campaign for the Nintendo YO-KAI watch game and TV show. Campaign Objectives: Reach parents and children Generate interest in the games release and TV series Acquire a database of competition entrants Encourage

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Fun Kids Launches New Skill for Amazon Echo

The first Alexa skills built specifically for kids are now live in the UK and the children’s radio station Fun Kids is a launch partner.

Amazon’s new Kid Skills give parents a layer of control over how their children use the popular Amazon Echo range of smart speakers, whitelisting and promoting approved apps.

Joining Fun Kids is content from The Beano, Duplo and Pac Man.

David Madelin, CTO at Fun Kids says “We want kids and families to be able to discover Fun Kids on all of their devices. We’re excited to have worked with Amazon to get this ready for the launch of Kid Skills and look forward to adding more features over the coming weeks.”

Fun Kids listeners can stream the radio station and ask Alexa questions about what’s currently playing on-air.

For any families who’ve enabled Kid Skills the request to “Play Fun Kids” will be delivered directly by the skill, rather than using a third party aggregator like TuneIn.

Dave continues “It’s important that we own the relationship with our listeners so we can deliver them a great product, but also to ensure we’re looking after children’s digital data, especially as new legislation comes into force this month.”

Fun Kids is the World’s Biggest Children’s Podcaster

UK children’s radio station Fun Kids is now the biggest producer of family podcasts in the world.

The station, which broadcasts nationwide in the UK on DAB Digital Radio, has been making podcasts since 2009, but they’re now responsible for 68 different podcast channels on a wide-range of topics to appeal to the interests of kids and families.

“Fun Kids has always been jam-packed with the most interesting content” says Station Manager Matt Deegan “we’re excited to make it over 2,000 episodes available to everyone, for free”.

In the UK kids are strong podcast listeners. According to RAJAR’s recent JamJar research, 18% of UK children (9 to 14s) listen to podcasts each week, on average for 41 minutes each.

The station produces regular podcast-specific shows including weekly kids magazine The Fun Kids Download presented by Sean Thorne and the Fun Kids Science Weekly presented by Dan Simpson with features about space, the human body and interviews with scientists from all over the world.

Today Fun Kids is announcing the Fun Kids Book Club – a new reading podcast. Its first episode kicks off with an interview with Kid Normal authors Greg James and Chris Smith, a reading from the new Future Ratboy book by author Jim Smith and presenter Bex Lindsay‘s top five books for the summer.

Alongside these podcasts, kids and parents can download Professor Hallux Builds a BodyDeep Space HighAge of the DinosaursMarina Ventura’s Guide to Our Planet and many more. There’s even a not-quite-Serial series called Bryony Brownwell’s Mystery Project. All of them are free and most are full-series so kids can binge-listen to their heart’s content.

The Fun Kids team has worked alongside many partners including the UK Space Agency, the National Gallery, the Bank of England, the Intellectual Property Office and the British Heart Foundation to produce some of these great shows.

As well as loads of audio podcasts, the station’s got a range of video podcasts too. Kids can keep up to date on the going’s on at Disney’s The Lodge and even watch cartoons to learn languages like Polish.

Matt Deegan: “Over a quarter of million children listen to Fun Kids on their radios, but we want to make all of our great shows available on parents’ phones, the family tablet and on the desktop too.”

All 68 podcast channels are available on funkidslive.com/podcasts, the Fun Kids appitunes.com/funkids and many of the world’s podcast aggregators.

Fun Kids Goes Nationwide on DAB

Radio’s biggest unserved audience – children – finally get a radio station they can call their own, with the nationwide launch of Folder Media’s children’s radio station Fun Kids.

Fun Kids broadcasts a mix of music, games and silliness for 6 to 12 year olds, hosted by a group of exciting, young radio presenters. In addition the station brings sing-a-longs, stories and learning for pre-schoolers with Fun Kids Junior, on-air when older brothers and sisters are at school.

Fun Kids, which up to now, has only broadcast on digital radio in London has enjoyed considerable success over the past five years, winning industry awards and reaching over a quarter of million young listeners each week.

Matt Deegan, Station Manager of Fun Kids: “Up until now children have been abandoned by the radio industry – both by commercial radio and the BBC. Fun Kids has built a large audience by catering for their tastes and interests, but we’ve been limited by just broadcasting digitally in London. The launch of Fun Kids across the UK will allow more children to have a radio station that they can call their own. Many radio stations talk about the need to bring young listeners to radio, but we’re the only ones actually doing it.”

As well as a broadcast radio station, Fun Kids has a popular website, operates over 150 podcasts channels and runs 6 YouTube channels covering everything from gaming to education.

Matt continues: “Kids are natively multi-platform. Whether it’s TV, the radio, tablets or hand-me-down iPhones, kids love content made for them. Growing our digital radio reach means that we’ll be reaching more radios and unlocking the 1.9m cars that came with DAB as standard last year, allowing kids, all over the UK, to spend even more time with Fun Kids”

Fun Kids’ national launch is part of a new national digital multiplex that will bring a selection of new radio stations to the UK. The station will go live to the UK on the 29th February. Listeners should ‘retune’ their radio to pick up Fun Kids and the other new stations.

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The Diary of Dennis the Menace

Client’s need: The client wanted to promote the special release for World Book Day, The Diary of Dennis the Menace: World Menace Day, and promote the entire catalogue of books. Our solution: Building on the excitement of World Book Day, we

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Junior Eurovision Partnership

Junior-Eurovision-Header

On 21st November it’s the Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2015 and only one place in the UK will be bringing you all the action – Fun Kids!

As our exclusive partner, you will be placed at the centre of this exciting activity.

Across the entire week, Bex will be hosting our flagship show, The Club, at the Junior Eurovision Song Contest in Bulgaria. Every day listeners will hear exclusive content, including interviews, backstage access, all culminating in an exclusive live broadcast of the show on 21st November.

Promoted across Fun Kids, this will be a unique 4-week partnership opportunity to promote your brand bringing it to hundreds of thousands of families listening across the country.

Click here to download the full opportunity

Christmas Partnership 2015

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Christmas is a big time for families! And Fun Kids can embrace this time of year like no other station with a whole schedule packed with non-stop Christmas music, Panto Guide and even Santa presenting every day!

Once again we’re looking for a Fun Kids’ Christmas Partner, giving you exclusive sponsorship that positions your brand at the heart of all Christmas programming on the radio.

With successful partners, such as Random House (view case study), this is a great way to make your brand front of mind in the  lead up to Christmas.

Click here to download the full opportunity

LEGO Friends

Client’s need: The client wanted to promote the new LEGO Friends Pop Star range, including five new sets to buy, and engage families with the new LEGO Friends character, Livi. Our solution: We ran a truly multi-platform campaign, including: Sponsorship

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Contact the team on 020 7739 7880 or email.