Advanced Television

Caterpillar Captions drives audience growth on Kenya’s Akili TV

March 27, 2026

A new programming block in Kenya, the Read-Along Hour, powered by Caterpillar Captions and launched in February, is delivering significant audience growth – not despite its educational focus, but because of it. In its daily 5:00–6:00 pm slot, the programme has already driven:

● +14.9 per cent increase in children’s viewership

● +39.1 per cent increase in adult co-viewing

That translates to:

● +194,900 additional child viewers

● +361,300 additional adult viewers

… all within a single hour of programming.

Parents are choosing to watch

Children’s television has, in recent years, been quietly deprioritised, edged out by tentpole entertainment and live events that promise more immediate returns. At the same time, educational content has largely been treated as a moral good rather than a commercial one: something broadcasters should do, but rarely something that moves the needle.

And yet, something interesting happens when you change the framing, says Caterpillar Captions

When content signals, clearly and instantly, that it is good for your child, parents behave differently. They lean in. The result, in this case, is a sharp increase not just in child audiences, but in parent co-viewing, a metric broadcasters and advertisers have always valued, but rarely managed to engineer.

What changed? 

The Read-Along Hour doesn’t rely on new shows or expensive commissions.

Instead, it pairs familiar, popular series, including Supa Strikas and Wild Kratts, with Literacy-Grade Captions, designed to help children follow, decode and learn as they watch.

Alongside this, each programme is accompanied by simple ‘Reading Nutrition Labels’, highlighting vocabulary, spelling and learning outcomes. In other words, the content hasn’t changed. But what it means to the viewer has. And that, it turns out, is enough.

A commercial signal hiding in plain sight

While the uplift in children’s viewing is significant, the real story is the adult audience, says Caterpillar Captions. Co-viewing increased by 39 per cent, materially shifting the child-to-adult ratio in the slot.

Jesse Soleil, President of Akili TV, commented: “Parents are clearly engaging with the content and discussing it with their children. That’s powerful educationally, but it’s also commercially significant. Co-viewing is critical for advertisers, and this is the strongest performance we’ve ever seen in this market.”

Which raises an interesting possibility: that educational value, when made visible, isn’t a constraint on audience growth – but a catalyst for it.

Competitive advantage

For broadcasters and streamers, the implication is perhaps uncomfortable. For years, educational content has been parked under CSR, well-intentioned but commercially secondary (at best). What this suggests is that the distinction may have been false, suggests Caterpillar Captions.

By subtly upgrading existing content rather than replacing it, the Read-Along Hour has created something that feels more valuable to families and performs better as a result.

Jeff Schon, CEO of Akili TV, added: “Within weeks of adding Caterpillar Captions, we saw a meaningful increase in both our children and parent audiences. It shows that adding an educational layer doesn’t have to come at a high cost – it can be a genuine draw. It’s one of the most effective and most painless additions we’ve made to the channel.”

Scaling the idea

Following the Kenya launch, Caterpillar Captions is now working with Akili TV to expand the approach across its broader catalogue, including localisation into additional languages. Early tests in Swahili and French have shown promising results. Discussions are also underway with broadcasters and streaming platforms internationally.

Henry Warren, CEO of Caterpillar Captions, said: “We help grow audiences by turning screen time into reading time. We’re working with a range of leading platforms to improve the literacy of a billion children by 2028.”

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