Andy Heyward

January 2008

As Andy Heyward, DIC Entertainment’s chairman and CEO, likes to point out, he’s only had two jobs his entire life, both in the children’s business. The first was with Hanna-Barbera and the second with DIC, a company that has grown from being just a producer and distributor of kids’ shows to a fully integrated, global brand-–management company. Among the brands in DIC’s stable are Inspector Gadget, Strawberry Shortcake, Madeline, Sabrina The Animated Series and Horseland. DIC is heavily involved in licensing. It owns Copyright Promotions (CPLG), a pan-European licensing agency. Besides selling programming to TV outlets around the world, DIC formed a co-production partnership with American Greetings Properties to launch the new branded kids’ programming block KewLopolis on CBS. It also programs the DIC Kids’ Network, a syndicated programming block that reaches 94 percent of U.S. households, and is a shareholder in KidsCo, a multi–platform global television channel for children and families.

TV KIDS: When you started in the TV business, a company could do well with quality programming and just a distribution business. That’s not sufficient these days, is it?

HEYWARD: I would go one step further. When I started in the business a company could do well without good quality product. I started out working as a writer for Joe Barbera and there were three networks: ABC, NBC and CBS. There was no cable, no syndication business to speak of, certainly nothing robust. The environment wasn’t fragmented. Shows like The Archie Show, Scooby-Doo and Smurfs, that were really popular and well-made shows, got 60 shares week in and week out. Every show did huge numbers because the marketplace was so captive—it was just staggering. Distribution at that time was everything. It was not what they say today, that content is king.

Today you have ABC, NBC, CBS, FOX, The CW, Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon and Disney, just to start off. Then there’s the next tier, PBS, ION, and it just goes on and on. And there’s new media—kids don’t distinguish new media from old media. A kid doesn’t get up and think, Oh, old media is television, new media is my computer and my telephone. They just live in a world where everything is just one big gestalt and they’ve got all these choices in front of them; they were born into it and they don’t know anything different from that.

It’s an environment where kids are multitasking constantly. They are downloading on the computer at the same time that they are instant messaging and watching TV. Now in that environment, imagine trying to launch a brand. You are so, so cannibalized trying to get to the two eyeballs and two ears of a kid, there are so many pieces going on, it’s very, very challenging.

TV KIDS: And yet DIC is successful in this business.

HEYWARD: You have to try to link up several of these different outlets together because one of them by itself just can’t get critical mass anymore. So when we launch something today we try to have a 360-degree approach and speak to all these different media. We’ve got to get on television. We’ve got to have an online community. We have to be out on home video. Very soon the telephone is going to be extremely important. Kids are getting phones at younger and younger ages today—it’s a commodity, that’s all it is today.

I have to share a story with you. A few years ago my daughter was about 11. She was cleaning out toys and stuff that was going to be given to charity that she didn’t use anymore. And I saw in the box a cell phone and I said, “Why are you giving that cell phone away?” And she said, “Well, Dad, you can’t download music with this, you can’t take pictures. What can you do with this?” And I said, “It’s a telephone, you talk!” She looked at me like I was an alien! Kids today look at telephones as devices with so many different functions. And by the way, kids don’t do e-mails at all today. E-mail is how their parents communicate. Kids are texting and instant messaging.

TV KIDS: Let’s talk about the CBS block.

HEYWARD: We’re probably up 50 percent from where we were last year. Having said that, the numbers on Saturday morning television overall for everybody are pretty modest. They are nowhere near to what they were in years past. We are happy with where we are going because it’s the only network that has shown growth this year. Last year we [targeted] girls with a block called Saturday Morning Secret Slumber Party. This year we re-branded it Kewlopolis. We brought in a couple of shows that play more towards boys, selling more towards boy advertisers as well. And it’s showing some improvement for us.

TV KIDS: Kewlopolis has an online component.

HEYWARD: Every show we do has an online community. And to distinguish an online community from just a website that has information on it, these are all places where kids can interact—there are games and activities, there are a variety of things for them to be a part of and continue the experience they get when watching the television show. For example, on dinosquad.com, kids can pick their own dinosaur and compete against people. They can learn much more about dinosaurs than what’s just on the television.

TV KIDS: Two of your new properties are The Beginner’s Bible and Mommy & Me.

HEYWARD: The Beginner’s Bible is in development and we are going to do a series of videos and a very aggressive licensing program. It’s not going to be a proselytizing type of product—–no religion in it whatsoever. It will just be great stories with conflict and crisis and jeopardy and all of the elements of dramatic storytelling that work so well.

Mommy & Me [is a reflection of the fact that] it’s kind of a seminal right of motherhood that you have a child and you get into these groups—they are everywhere: in churches, community centers, synagogues, and they are very popular. We acquired the brand and developed a number of things around it. We have an online community. We will be producing DVDs. We have produced music. We did an exclusive deal with Wal-Mart for a direct-to-retail program for the Mommy & Me brand that launched in fall 2007 and we will have new product to debut in 2008 at Wal-Mart. That is a very important piece of business for us. There will be some new announcements shortly that will connect to other things we are doing in television.

TV KIDS: Inspector Gadget turns 25 next year.

HEYWARD: Inspector Gadget is near and dear to me. It was the first property we ever did. I created it myself. It was one of those characters that took off at a time when the competition was not so great. I don’t know—to be honest with you—if Inspector Gadget would be able to work as well today, because there is so much competition out there. But we have broadcasters that come to us over and over again that want to do new versions of Inspector Gadget. We are talking to a leading broadcaster in France about the possibility of doing something. We actually looked at doing a dark Gadget, which would be much more realistic, a little bit manga-esque, but we decided not to. Everybody told us, don’t tinker with it. Leave him as the bumbling inspector. We will probably do something with the property in the programming arena that could possibly be a fit for the CBS block next year. I can’t tell you exactly how because it hasn’t been decided yet.

TV KIDS: Where did you get the inspiration for him?

HEYWARD: When I was at Hanna-Barbera, the last series I worked on was Dynomutt Dog Wonder. Blue Falcon was a bumbling superhero; none of his stuff worked quite right. And Dynomutt the dog had all these gadgets attached to him. Inspector Gadget was inspired a little bit by that, a little bit by Get Smart and a little bit by The Six Million Dollar Man—a lot of stuff helped bring it together.

The first voice we had was Gary Owens’, who did the audition and came up with the expression Wowzers, which we loved, and Inspector Gadget says Wowzers all the time! But in the end we decided Gary didn’t work for us. After the first episode we went to Jesse White—the repairman in the Maytag commercials. He did the voice for a couple of episodes and we didn’t think that was hitting it right. Then we thought, wait a minute, Don Adams would be brilliant. He was just coming off of Get Smart, so we contacted him and he did [the series]. And years later I remember running into Don at a restaurant and he told me, “I’ve been in the business 50 years, I did Get Smart and this and that, still today when I meet people they come up to me and say, ‘Oh, you’re Inspector Gadget!’”

TV KIDS: You have pretty ambitious plans for rolling KidsCo out in several territories.

HEYWARD: We do. We own a third, Nelvana Enterprises owns a third, NBC Universal owns 28 percent and management owns about 5 percent. We’ve already rolled out in a number of territories in Eastern Europe. [We’re planning to roll out in] Latin America and Asia in 2008. We’ve got some terrific content and we’re pretty dramatically ahead of plan.

TV KIDS: What do you enjoy most about your work?

HEYWARD: I get up every day and look forward to the exciting part of my work. I don’t enjoy being bogged down with the business aspects as much, but I have a wonderful team of people who do that. I enjoy working with writers and artists developing new things. And I enjoy working with young people that we bring up through the ranks. I feel I’m very fortunate. I get to do something that I like and I can earn my living with a smile on my face every day.