CBeebies BAFTA and International Emmy® Award-winning preschool series Hey Duggee celebrates the hitting more than one billion video views in China. The show launched in China on Tencent, iQiyi, and Youku in January, April and May 2017 respectively and in less than a year has hit over one billion combined video views across all three streaming platforms.
Hey Duggee is a Studio AKA production with BBC Worldwide and Henrietta Hurford-Jones, Director of Children’s Content at BBC Worldwide is Executive Producer. The series launched on CBeebies in the UK in 2015 and has quickly grown its international footprint to cover 150 territories. In addition to China, these include Nick JR in the US, France Television, ABC Australia, SVT Sweden, Treehouse in Canada, Cartoonito in Italy and Panda in Spain.
News of one billion video views in China follows two BAFTA award wins for the brand in November for Pre-School Animation and the Hey Duggee We Love Animals app, which won the Interative category. Downloads for all Hey Duggee apps surpassed one million worldwide in February 2017 as well.
It is not only Hey Duggee increasing numbers of Chinese children are tuning into. On iQIYI alone, CBeebies content has been viewed over 604 million times since the provider became the first digital platform in China to offer a ‘block’ of 37 CBeebies titles branded under 思贝斯 (sī bèi sī) in May 2017. This comes after iQIYI licensed 300 hours of children’s content from BBC Worldwide last year including Go Jetters Dinopaws and Sarah & Duck.
Hey Duggee has been commissioned for a third series which is expected to transmit on CBeebies in the UK in autumn 2018 before becoming available in other markets.