Brown Johnson

October 2008

Brown Johnson has been credited with changing the preschool television landscape in the U.S. She was the driving force behind Nick Jr.’s “play to learn” philosophy and oversaw the development of Blue’s Clues, Dora the Explorer and a host of other series that have provided little ones with fun new ways of looking at their world. Earlier this year, Nickelodeon created a new position for Johnson—president of animation for Nickelodeon and MTVN Kids and Family Group—where she oversees development and production for all animated programming across Nickelodeon. A 20-year veteran of Nickelodeon, Johnson is a firm believer in its mission of “putting kids first.”

TV KIDS: How do you apply Nickelodeon’s mission to today’s multitasking kids who are online, playing video games, watching TV and using their cell phones? Has that stretched what you have to do?
JOHNSON: Yeah, but in a great way. One of my mottos is that I want a bigger playground and having the traditional linear television medium as well as broadband and online games and magazines and comic books and books and downloads and iTunes, just gives us more space to play with and more kinds of interactivity to think about.
We’re having this big game day at the studio, and we’ll have all the new video games—Rock Band 2, Wii Fit, Dance Dance Revolution. It will give the animators and artists a chance to play. A lot of them are gaming nerds, but if they don’t already have these games, they will have great exposure to some of the new media and new ways to play, and maybe it will lead to new stories or new kinds of interactivity for the web.

TV KIDS: Kids have definitely become more media savvy, even the little ones. What do they expect today from a TV show and what are the parents’ expectations as well? What do you have to deliver today compared to 10, 15 years ago?
JOHNSON: It’s very interesting what happened when Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer came in to the TV marketplace. They really did have an effect not only on what kids want from television, but also on what parents think of as educational. The idea that TV can be interactive is very highly valued by parents now. Blue’s Clues literally changed the way kids watch tele¬vision. If you’ve read Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point you know he talks about how Blue’s Clues really was a revolution in educational television, which is incredibly cool!
I never thought that we could do it again. I thought, with Blue’s Clues we’ve caught a genie in a bottle, and we’ll never be able to catch that genie again. But then we thought, well we’ll give it a try. We wanted to add more adventure, and we wanted another girl hero. We loved the idea of this character being multilingual. We made Dora the Explorer, and I am constantly surprised at how successful Dora is. I think it’s fantastic. I didn’t expect Dora not to be successful, but Dora has translated into 25 languages and it’s in 125 markets.  That’s pretty amazing, and it goes back to how incredibly important it is to be careful about what you put on TV.
When you have a product that’s that far reaching, you have to make sure that it’s as good as you can make it. TV’s a really powerful medium, especially for little kids. They believe everything that is put in front of them. You can show someone modeling the behavior of solving a problem by cutting someone’s head off, that’s one way, or you show someone modeling the behavior of solving it differently through talking and sharing. It may sound really pedantic, but it’s what happens with tiny little kids.

TV KIDS: Nickelodeon has always offered a variety of animation styles. Why has that been important?
JOHNSON: It’s important because our animation is largely led by our studio. We try to be very creator-friendly and give them an opportunity to speak with their own voice. That’s why there is really not just one style here. If you look at Warner Bros. or Klasky Csupo or some of the other studios, their styles are quite similar. We started making our first computer-generated animated series, a show called Tak, about three years ago. This year we will have produced the equivalent of 17 feature-length films—all in one year and in CG.

TV KIDS: Nickelodeon has brought little ones ethnic diversity, as well. That’s very important to you, isn’t it?
JOHNSON: Yes, incredibly important to me. I went to a conference about race and gender portrayal in children’s media, and it reported that white kids see themselves on TV but no other ethnic race does. We’ve made every effort to change that. We’ve done Dora the Explorer and Little Bill, which is based on stories by Bill Cosby. On Backyardigans the talent is African American, so are the creators. It’s interesting that the show does overindex in black homes in the U.S.
Ni Hao, Kai-lan, which we are launching at MIPCOM, came out of a couple of shorts. We wanted to work with creators whose voices had not been heard before, creators of color or with ethnic backgrounds that were new to us. So we worked with a woman named Rita Romchandra, who did a couple of shorts about growing up in India, and with a couple of African American creators that we had met on Little Bill. Out of that came Karen Chao, the creator of Ni Hao, Kai-lan, which is based on her treasured childhood with her grandfather and the games she used to play, while learning a little bit of Mandarin, which is an incredibly difficult language. The show has this emotional curriculum that was really hard to get our hands around because we didn’t want it to be sob stories about kids having a hard time. It’s more about, I feel this way, how can I help myself feel better? It’s not, You feel bad, that’s bad, fix this, but instead, Here’s what you can do with your emotions.

TV KIDS: Have the diversity in styles and in storytelling that you offer helped attract new talent to Nickelodeon?
JOHNSON: We always need to keep reaching out to new people and new voices because we can always get a little lazy about who we work with. From working on Dora, we were also able to work with Jorge Gutierrez and Sandra Equihua, who created El Tigre, a great series. I do believe that diverse families notice that Nickelodeon doesn’t just have one voice. Our voice is as diverse as our audience and some years were better than other years, but I think we are doing really well.

TV KIDS: You’ve been at Nick many years now. What has kept you there, and what do you enjoy most about what you do?
JOHNSON: The ability to do what I wanted. Because I was part of Nick Jr. for such a long time and it was sort of a forgotten audience segment cause the advertisers weren’t interested in it, we got to do whatever we wanted. That’s really why we got to take chances with shows like Blue’s Clues and Dora the Explorer and now Ni Hao, Kai-lan. The people at the company were more willing to take risks. And the preschool shows have also helped build our consumer-products business. I like the creative freedom and the congeniality. Nickelodeon is full of these type-A creators, and everybody is very considerate. And the combination of a love of media, a love of the creative process, along with a love for kids, and that whole idea of how what we are putting on TV is affecting how their minds change and grow, or helping them relax, see the world and deal with difficult situations—it’s a good feeling.