Making Sense of Sensical, a New Digital Video Destination for Kids

Andrew Wallenstein
·1 min read

Common Sense Media may be best known for giving parents guidance on what film and TV shows are appropriate for their children to view. But now a new for-profit offshoot of the non-profit venture aims to be a kid-friendly content provider in its own right.

Launching this summer, Sensical is a free ad-supported app stocked with a wide range of video entertainment customized to not only appeal to youngsters of all ages, but parents who want to make sure the programming is uplifting or educational across a variety of topics.

More from Variety

Listen to the podcast here:

Sensical offers a safe alternative to the bigger platforms that have gotten a bad reputation for serving up inappropriate content and advertising for kids. “The problem on the algorithm-driven services is they go down the rabbit hole, and oftentimes that rabbit hole doesn’t end well,” said Common Sense Networks CEO Eric Berger on the latest episode of the Strictly Business podcast. “And this, we say, is the safe rabbit hole.”

Berger, who is no stranger to ad-supported streaming having come over to Sensical from Sony Pictures Television, where he oversaw the Crackle brand, discusses everything he’s done to make his new venture a fun destination, from an interest-based learning approach divided into three learning groups to three live-channel features.

“Parents just don’t have the tools or the wherewithal to find out or separate what is healthy and what is not healthy from a content perspective. So we’ve done that,” he said.

“Strictly Business” is Variety‘s weekly podcast featuring conversations with industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. A new episode debuts each Wednesday and can be downloaded on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and SoundCloud.

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.