Have You Met Catherine?
It would be remiss of us here at The Water Cooler not to get to know the delightful Catherine Collins this week! Catherine is the Head of Multichannels and Pay, involved in working across all content on those channels and played a huge part in launching Australia’s first free-to-air Nickelodeon channel. Catherine sat down with The Water Cooler over a couple kelp shakes and krabby patties and told us all about it!
What is your role and what does it entail?
I’m the Head of Multichannels and Pay. My role involves working across all the incredible content on our FTA Multichannels (10 Peach, 10 Bold, 10 Shake) and brands including Nickelodeon, MTV, MTV Music and CMT to bring them to a wide viewing audience while also aligning with both the local and global content strategy.
What I love about my job is the opportunity to work with so many different teams across the business who are involved in the creation of our content and the delivery of our channels in so many different ways.
What do love most about working at Paramount?
I love that Paramount gives me the opportunity to work with incredibly talented people both locally and internationally. Everyone I come across is thoughtful, hard-working and deeply passionate about delivering the best possible experience to all of our audiences. As a huge pop culture fan, I adore that every day I have the privilege of working across such iconic shows and brands.
Today marks the launch of Australia’s first Nickelodeon premium free-to-air channel, why is this so significant?
This is the very first time the Nickelodeon channel has been available free to all in Australia. Viewers will be able to find all their favourite Nickelodeon shows for free in the one place on Channel 13 and live streamed on 10 Play.
What goes on behind the scenes to make this happen?
A huge number of talented people working very hard across the entire business.
Everyone from technology to creative to content services to sales to presentation scheduling to digital to classification to our legal team to acquisitions and so many more have worked tirelessly both locally and internationally as one team to ensure a successful channel launch. It’s been incredible!
What can viewers expect to see from this channel?
All their favourite Nickelodeon shows in the one place.
This includes a daytime line up of all the programs from the current Nickelodeon slate such as PAW Patrol, Blue’s Clues & You! Baby Shark’s Big Show!, SpongeBob SquarePants, The Loud House, That Girl Lay Lay and Danger Force plus plenty of audience favourites from the library.
For the older fans we are also launching an evening Nick@Nite programming block which includes a line up at 10.30pm of a number of Nickelodeons’ legendary retro animations including The Ren & Stimpy Show, Angry Beavers, Rocko’s Modern Life, CatDog and Aaahh!!! Real Monsters.
You’ll also get to see the new Nickelodeon brand identity and elements on air. The splat is back! Our promos, design, content services, content operations, pres scheduling and sales operations teams have done an incredible job of pulling this together alongside all of our colleagues internationally.
Plus, there’s more… coming soon will be the new season of Australian production Rock Island Mysteries Season 2, the FTA premiere of Monster High: The Movie, Monster High: The Animated Series and live action The Really Loud House.
What makes Nickelodeon so special?
No matter your age, Nickelodeon brings to life the best things about being a kid for all of us.
It appeals to pre-schoolers meeting the PAW Patrol for the very first time, tweens about to move to a new school with Monster High and adults who grew up watching SpongeBob SquarePants that now get to share that experience with their families. It’s playful, it’s messy, it’s really fun and sometimes there is SLIME!
Who is your favourite Nickelodeon character or show and why?
That is a very difficult question to answer.
For show I will say Blue’s Clues and You! It’s a great show. I love the interactive element, the clue solving storytelling and seeing how it’s evolved from the original. Blue as a character is very sweet and playful. I also have memories of being sick years ago and napping on the couch with the original show in the background for comfort.
My favourite new character is Coral from the recent PAW Patrol: Aqua Pups. She is a Mer Pup who can change between her ocean and land forms. She is clever and brave, she can sing, plus she has a really fun submarine shaped like a seahorse. Coral is definitely a pup I want to have as a friend.
Coral and Blue both have a place by my desk in the office. (Please don’t tell my cat I picked dogs!)
