Kids Media Industry in Crisis: Kids Screen Summit Cancelled and World Screen Shuts Down — A Kids Media Club Emergency Episode

This is a short, unplanned emergency episode — Andy, Jo, and Emily jumping on a three-way call in real time to react to a double dose of seismic industry news landing in the same day. First came the announcement that World Screen (and its TV Kids publication) would be ceasing to publish. Then, as the episode was being recorded, the news dropped that the Kids Screen Summit would not be returning in 2027, with parent company Brunico Communications confirming it is discontinuing its entire US events portfolio — Kids Screen, Realscreen, and NATPE among them. Jocelyn Christie, who has long been the face of Kids Screen, is also departing.

The trio don't dress it up. Kids Screen Summit has been, as the official announcement itself acknowledges, the heartbeat of the international kids content community for 30 years — the event that defined careers, brokered relationships, and gave the industry its annual gathering point. Its loss, coming alongside World Screen's closure, feels like more than a coincidence of bad timing.

The conversation quickly moves to the why. Andy notes that the most recent Kids Screen Summit was noticeably down on attendance, raising real questions about whether the numbers could ever add up again. Jo and Emily point to the structural shifts underneath: the kids media industry is under sustained pressure across funding, distribution, and monetisation, and the traditional event model — built around large corporate delegations from major broadcasters like Disney who could absorb the cost of sending whole departments — no longer reflects the reality of who is actually in the room. With fewer buyers, a more fragmented landscape, and individual attendees increasingly having to justify the expense themselves, the value proposition has fundamentally changed.

There's a broader point made about what these events were actually for, and whether that purpose still exists. Andy frames it neatly: these conferences were built around the gravitational pull of the big broadcasters, and when that gravitational force weakens, everything orbiting around it drifts. Emily raises the comparison with World Screen's TV Kids online summits, which have continued to attract strong speakers without requiring anyone to get on a plane — a model that perhaps points to where things are heading.

The episode ends on a note that's equal parts rueful and forward-looking, with Jo floating the idea that the Kids Media Club itself might have a role to play in filling some of the vacuum being left behind.

Key Takeaways:

1. Kids Screen Summit will not return in 2027, with Brunico Communications discontinuing its full US events portfolio — a significant moment for an event that has been central to the kids content industry for three decades.
2. World Screen and TV Kids have also ceased publishing, meaning the industry has lost two major institutional pillars in a single day.
3. Declining attendance was already a warning sign — the most recent Kids Screen was visibly down on numbers, raising questions about sustainability that have now been answered.
4. The traditional event model was built for a different industry — when major broadcasters could fund large corporate delegations, the economics worked. With fewer buyers and more individual attendees justifying costs themselves, the model has become increasingly difficult to sustain.
5. This is symptomatic of deeper industry-wide pressure — the loss of these events reflects the same structural stresses around funding, distribution, and monetisation that have been reshaping kids media more broadly.
6. The gravitational pull of the big broadcasters is weakening — and the conferences, markets, and publications that were built around that pull are feeling it acutely.
7. Online events may point to a more viable model — the TV Kids online summits are cited as an example of strong programming delivered without the barrier of travel costs and logistics.
8. A vacuum is forming, and the question of what — or who — fills it is now very much open.