Buyer Profile: TELETOON’s Caroline Tyre

Director of Programming
TELETOON

TV KIDS: Tell me about the general focus of the channel and how the schedule is broken down into dayparts.
TYRE: TELETOON offers the best in animation and animated-related programming for all age groups across Canada in both English and French. TELETOON’s English and French main channels focus on kids 6 to 11 with lots of laughs and the best in action properties.

In the evening, we have smart, irreverent, culturally relevant comedy and movies for adults 18 to 34. We have also launched TELETOON Retro in both English and French, which airs all the classic favorites for the whole family like The Flintstones, The Bugs Bunny & Tweety Show and Astro Boy.

Lastly, other screens are becoming increasingly important to our viewers. We have successfully launched our TELETOON video player, TELETOON On Demand and TELETOON on iTunes. It’s imperative for us to give our viewers a 360-degree viewing experience. 

TV KIDS: Are you looking to draw in either more boy viewers or more girl viewers?
TYRE: We are looking for more of a co-viewing audience in "kid prime time" (6 p.m. to 9 p.m.). We are heavy on boy but don’t want to exclude girls and parents. The perfect show for us is written to make a 10-year-old boy laugh and is girl- and parent-inclusive.

For Retro, we are targeting the 25-to-54 crowd, but have shows that work from cradle to grave. Grandparents can watch with their grandkids. 

TV KIDS: How much of the schedule is made up of acquired series and how much is original content?
TYRE: Sixty percent of TELETOON’s total schedule (6 a.m. to midnight) is made up of our original Canadian programming, as well as 60 percent of our prime-time schedule (4 p.m. to 10 p.m.). The rest are acquisitions. 

For Retro, 35 percent of our shows are Canadian content but all our shows on Retro are acquisitions, as all shows need to be 10 years old at the minimum.

TV KIDS: What are some of your most recent acquisitions?
TYRE: Star Wars: The Clone Wars is doing amazing for us and we are very happy to be partnered with Lucasfilm Animation on this amazing project. In adult prime time, King of the Hill has been a great addition to our FOX lineup of Futurama and American Dad. 

TV KIDS: What led you to pick up these titles?
TYRE: We’ve been tracking the Star Wars series for years. It’s a natural fit with all of our key action titles from Marvel and DC Comics. Now that the Star Wars franchise is animated, TELETOON is the perfect home for this franchise. It has amazing appeal for kids and adults alike. 

For King of the Hill, we have really been looking for comedies for our prime-time schedule that work for the 18-to-34 crowd that won’t be too offensive to kids if they stay up a bit late. Parents still see TELETOON as a kids’ channel so we have to have some great transition shows that the whole family can watch, that aren’t too edgy or inappropriate for kids. We are slowly aging up throughout the night with these titles. 

TV KIDS: What have been some of your top performing acquisitions?
TYRE: Everything Scooby-Doo rates well for us—the old Scooby-Doo movies, What’s New, Scooby-Doo?, Shaggy & Scooby-Doo Get a Clue! Also, The Super Hero Squad Show and Wolverine and the X-Men both continue to rate well in many demos. And our Big Ticket Movie slot has been our top destination for the whole family, with blockbuster movies like Ghostbusters, Ben 10: Alien Swarm, The Addams Family and Scooby-Doo: The Mystery Begins.

TV KIDS: Where do most of your acquisitions come from?
TYRE: We are very open when looking for acquisitions. We are always keen to meet new international independents that might have the next hit. In addition, we work with all the studios and have great partnerships with Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. and Marvel. 

TV KIDS: What genres are you looking to acquire?
TYRE: We need animated comedies for kids 6 to 11, like our hit show Johnny Test. And we need prime-time adult fare, like The Simpsons. We also have a big appetite for movies for both our kid and adult movie slots in English and French. On the Retro front, we are looking to expand from the ’50s and ’60s product we have now into some classic ’70s and ’80s hits. 

TV KIDS: Are there any particular slots that you’re looking to fill?
TYRE: For the kids’ comedies, we need a show that can live all over the schedule and can be a heavy competitor to the SpongeBob and Suite Life shows on our competitors’ schedules. 

For movies, we are looking to fill our Big Ticket Movie slot, Saturdays at 7 p.m., and our Superfilm slot in English and French, where we have movies like V for Vendetta, Lord of the Rings and 300.