Sesame Street, Disney to roll out mobile entertainment for kids

As any parent will tell you, kids love phones. Whether it's a 6-month-old slobbering all over your new Nokia or a toddler racing you to answer on the first ring (and beating you, before you've had a chance to Caller ID it and let voice mail get it), phones are hot with the pre-school set. And, while most parents have learned that a deactivated cell usually does the trick (obvious toy phones are usually discarded immediately by discriminating youngsters), the entertainment and telecom industries are hard at work creating media properties that will have the kids demanding real phones. Teleteubbies creator Anne Wood, Sesame Street's interactive division, Disney and Warner Brothers are among the companies with plans to roll out kid-friendly videos that will play back on 3G services like Verizon's
V Cast. (After all, if there's one thing kids love more than phones, it's TV.) "It's certainly not like we're advocating selling phones to preschoolers,"
J. Paul Marcum of Sesame Street told The New York Times. "But you can't ignore the convenience factor when people are in motion. A parent can pass back a telephone to the kids in the back of the car. And it's a device that families are going to carry with them everywhere." And as savvy marketers know, hook 'em young and they're yours for life.