Q&A: Michael Carrington

Following its British success, the preschool service Cartoonito begins its expansion across Europe, the Middle East and Africa this month. Michael Carrington, the chief content officer for Turner Broadcasting EMEA, tells TV Kids Weekly about the new service.

TV KIDS: What prompted the decision to take Cartoonito out into the rest of Europe, the Middle East and Africa?
CARRINGTON: Cartoonito had just existed in the U.K. as a dedicated preschool channel. The schedule consists mostly of acquired programs—the best preschool programs from around the world. It’s been running for a few years now and in the last 12 months we’ve seen a real connection with it; audiences are really starting to believe in it and we’re seeing parents have faith in the channel and kids coming to the programs. We’ve seen audiences grow, which is fantastic. [Cartoon Network is] in all the European territories, all of Africa and the Middle East, and when we looked at taking a portfolio approach, we didn’t have a dedicated preschool block or channel outside the U.K. So we figured that we could take all the knowledge that we have [from the U.K.] as well as most of the programming and take the channel out into the wider world.

TV KIDS: Is this EMEA Cartoonito service being programmed separately from the U.K. channel?
CARRINGTON: Yes. We’ll be rolling it out as a block of programs; the minimum block will be two hours in most countries and it could extend to four hours in some countries. That block will sit on Boomerang, wherever Boomerang exists. There are only two countries in our region where we don’t have it—the Middle East and Turkey. So in the Middle East and Turkey, this Cartoonito block will sit on Cartoon Network itself. And then in Italy and Spain we’re actually launching full channels. They’re very big markets for us. We have lots of kids watching Cartoon Network, and in those two particular territories we have a free-to-air channel called Boing, which has exposed our brands to a much wider audience than in most of our other territories. We feel that those two markets are particularly mature and they can cope with us launching full-blown channels. The ambition in the long term, of course, is that we would have Cartoonito as a channel everywhere, but we have to be sensible about our approach.

In terms of the brand, look and feel, it’s all the same, so it won’t matter whether you’re in Italy or Denmark or Hungary, your experience of Cartoonito will be identical. Although it’s targeting 3- to 6-year-olds, the focus is aspirational, so 5- and 6-year-olds. The feel of the channel is quite dynamic and [it’s not a] traditional preschool channel. We push the storytelling to a certain degree, so we have quirky programming like Bananas in Pyjamas, which is something that we bought for every country. Jelly Jamm is a co-production with Vodka Capital; it’s very dynamic, with CGI, and is a little bit in your face in terms of a preschool program. We’re just making sure that we have this great sense of humor, because as a portfolio of channels we’re taking the essence of Cartoon Network and trying to transform that into something that works for the younger audience. At the end of the day we know all about making kids laugh out loud, and that’s what we’re trying to do with Cartoonito.

Click here to read about Carrington’s shopping list for MIPCOM and Cartoon Network’s global programming initiatives.