Cartoon Network’s Jim Samples

Cartoon Network has built
its reputation and its audience by offering a wide variety of animated series.
Always funny and often irreverent, many of these toons have showcased
innovative animation styles and techniques. Today, Cartoon Network is seen in
some 160 countries around the world. In the U.S., where it is in more than 89
million homes, it shares space with Adult Swim, a block of animated shows that
airs late night Sundays through Thursdays, targeting viewers aged 18 to 34. Jim
Samples, the channel’s executive VP and general manager, talks about what’s new
at Cartoon Network, both in the U.S. and around the world.

TV KIDS: What
changes and additions have you made in your program schedule?

SAMPLES: The
most important change over the last several years has been the addition of our
own original programming. We began producing a significant number of original
shows and now most of our schedule consists of original series, which are
produced in Cartoon Network’s studios in Burbank. For example, three of our
strongest shows, which are stripped [Monday through Friday], Ben 10, Camp Lazlo and The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy,
have been driving our ratings’ increases.

And on top of that, we
announced that we were beginning to do long-form programming, which I see as a
natural evolution as we produce more of our own content. For example, among the
long form in production we have a Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends movie and we’ll have 90-minute specials for Bill
& Mandy, Lazlo, Ben 10 and Ed, Edd n Eddy. A lot of the strategy [involves] building an experience that allows us to go outside the usual world of these
shows—to a more expansive world.

Beyond that, the most
talked about and biggest experiment for us is Re-Animated, which is an original movie that mixes both live
action and animation. It is really a departure for us; it has both real people
and cartoons. That’s going to air in the fall. The strategy is to offer our
viewers an ever-increasing variety of animated, and in some cases non-animated,
programming.

TV KIDS: Cartoon
Network also has music-based programming on Friday nights.

SAMPLES: Class
of 3000, which we announced last
year, is coming to the air soon. It’s a show we’re working on with André
Benjamin from [the hip-hop duo] OutKast. In this animated series, Sunny Bridges
is a top-of-the-charts musician who decides to step out and go back to his
school—imagine a magnet school for musicians. Obviously you find a lot of
correlations between Sunny and some of the experiences of André Benjamin, who
did go to a magnet school for musicians in Atlanta. So Sunny Bridges comes back
and the series is about him and his group of students and there is original
music in every episode created by André Benjamin and his partners. It’s a lot
of fun and a very different kind of series for us. And we think it’s going to
do very well on the air. The design is amazing and Class of 3000 is being produced by Cartoon Network Studios in
Burbank.

And on our Friday-night
variety show we’ve been bringing original bands in every week—real bands,
not animated ones—and that has been doing well, too. For a long time we
have wanted to step up the amount of music we were doing on the air, and that’s
finally coming to fruition.

TV KIDS: Kids
these days do so much more than just watch TV. What is your strategy regarding
new media?

SAMPLES: One
of the advantages I have in this area is that before managing Cartoon Network,
I managed the New Media area. That was around 1999, 2000. At that time, Cartoon
Network started investing heavily in online assets. We tried very short-form
programming in Flash. We created what we called Web Premiere Toons. We tried online trading cards. We tried a whole
bunch of stuff. And the thing that we learned very early on, by around 2001,
was that what kids liked most online was playing games with all the characters
they love from the shows. Much of our strategy has been around that and we have
been happy with that. Games drive the majority of the traffic on cartoonnetwork.com.
The numbers are just phenomenal in terms of the [amount of] time spent on the
website and the kids who are going there.

We have shorts and lots of
other content online. You can watch entire episodes of our action-adventure
anime programming on [our broadband site] Toonami Jetstream. It’s a joint
venture with VIZ Media. And recently the biggest initiative that we announced
is a massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) that comes on board in 2008.

The most important thing
for us as kids’ programmers is to be in all those places where kids are,
whether that be mobile or broadband, and to not be afraid of them.
Multi-tasking and using all different forms of media is very much a part of
kids’ lives. Our viewers at this point are kids who have grown up having all
those things and taking them for granted. Think about it, if you are seven
years old and you live in a household that has a cable modem or DSL, the
Internet is always on; Mom always has a cell phone with a screen on it and you
can probably watch video and also play games on it. Those are all such natural
things for kids.

TV KIDS: What
does the on-demand world offer Cartoon Network?

SAMPLES: Kids’
programming is doing very well on demand, and our affiliates are eager to have
as much content as we are able to provide them. In fact, it’s leading among
many of the on-demand offerings. I like on demand, particularly since—just
like broadband—it allows us to reach out to more niche audiences. For
example, we are able to have a much more permanent presence with preschool
programming in the on-demand world than we can on the network. Since our
network is advertiser-supported, we have to reach out for a mass audience,
whereas on broadband, for example, we can have a Toonami Jetstream offering for
boys 9 to 14. It’s one more way to expand the brand.

TV KIDS: Tell
me about Cartoon Network Studios. How much new product do you like having in
the pipeline?

SAMPLES: At any
given time we generally have about six shows in production for kids 6 to 11,
and we like to be able to introduce two or three new original productions a
year. That’s up from one or two a few years ago, and on top of that there are
co-productions and acquisitions.

TV KIDS: Even
though you are producing more of your own shows, do co-productions and
acquisitions still play an important role in your schedule?

SAMPLES:
Absolutely. My philosophy is that it’s dangerous for any TV programmer to rely
entirely on self-produced programming, because no matter how good you are, the
variety and different [styles that acquired shows can offer] are an important
part of the programming mix.

TV KIDS: We’ve
seen in several cases that there are good ideas coming from Europe and Asia.

SAMPLES: Absolutely.
Totally Spies! was a very
successful show on our channel. We have Fantastic Four that just launched and has done very well on
Saturday mornings, and that is a European production. Interestingly, our
Cartoon Network U.K. office did the development on Fantastic Four and worked with the French company Moonscoop. And
the show is based on a U.S.-originated comic concept. It truly is an
international show, and it’s working great.

TV KIDS: With
your own studio and in-house productions, are you in a position to attract more
talent than you were in the past?

SAMPLES: That
generally has not been a problem for us ever since the beginning. When Betty
Cohen [Cartoon Network’s former president] started putting all of this
together, her mantra was that we were going to be a creative-driven shop. All
of her team and certainly I agreed with her. We felt like that was the right
way to do it. And Genndy Tartakovsky [creator of Samurai Jack] and Craig McCracken [creator of The Powerpuff
Girls] and all those guys came in
at the very beginning. And now Craig McCracken, for example, in addition to his
role as director of Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends, is the talent mentor at the studio. As new
creators come in and bring us ideas and pitches, he meets with them and mentors
them along with our development staff. That approach has made us an attractive
place for talent to be. It’s not been a challenge for us. If we as a network
try to exert our will too much on creators, then I think we crush the creative
process.

TV KIDS: How
is Cartoon Network’s preschool block in the U.S. performing?

SAMPLES: There
was a lot of learning there, and we are very happy with the way things have
evolved. One of the things we realized as we were moving forward was that it
does take a long time to build up a critical audience in the preschool area.
And some of the most successful shows we have in preschool were the classics
that parents feel very comfortable with, like Tom and Jerry. We began using those as launchpads for our new
shows like Harry and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs, Gerald McBoing Boing and Peppa Pig. And once we began placing the new shows between the classic shows,
the parents and kids who were coming to the established and trusted shows were
sticking around for the new ones. We’ve been doing that for nearly a year now,
and that’s worked for us and we will continue with that strategy.

TV KIDS: And
at the other end of the age spectrum, Adult Swim has also been successful for you.

SAMPLES: We’re
still the number-one spot for 18- to 34-year-old men. It’s been a wild ride and
a lot of fun!

TV KIDS: How
much autonomy do the international channels have in programming their own
schedules, and how often do they work together in sharing or developing shows?

SAMPLES: They
have a lot of autonomy in scheduling and acquisitions. Because of the need for
scale in the original productions that we are doing in Burbank, we have what we
call the “greenlight council”—some people say we send out smoke signals
when we reach an agreement! It’s a group of key creative talent and myself, and
we include in that group Finn Arnesen [the senior VP of original animation and
international development at Turner Broadcasting System Europe], who is in the
U.K., and he speaks for our international channels.Together we decide which
programs we should move forward with and which ones we should continue to
produce. So [the international channels] have a voice there and we actually do
the productions in Burbank.

One of the things that has
changed and is very interesting is that Finn has also set up a Cartoon Network
original-production unit in London. They will be producing some shows there and
the role will be reversed. We will have a voice in that process.

If you look around the
world, we have a channel in India—Pogo—and they are producing live
action there. I love hearing about it, but I’m not very involved with that. So
it varies country to country.

TV KIDS: What
pro-social initiatives is Cartoon Network involved in?

SAMPLES: We’ve
had the Get Animated umbrella
campaign [which is a healthy lifestyles initiative]. What we are focusing on in
particular is Rescuing Recess,
our number one pro-social effort. As we were looking at issues of childhood
obesity, one of the things we discovered was the lack of activity and the
elimination of recess at schools was so rampant that it was considered to be
one of the root causes [of obesity]. We felt that as a medium, [Rescuing
Recess] could help by raising
awareness around that. We have an ongoing $1.3 million campaign. We are raising
awareness and we are providing tools for schools [including community recess
monitor volunteer information, and distributing 10,000 free Rescuing Recess kits to participating schools for use throughout
the school year] so that they can offer recess to kids. We’re working together
with the National PTA [Parent Teachers Association].

TV KIDS: What
is your vision for Cartoon Network in the next two to three years?

SAMPLES: The
core is the same, we want to create the best characters and the best animated
shows for kids and young adults. And we want to be on the cutting edge of all
the new technology that allows these characters and these shows to be enjoyed
wherever our viewers are. Over the next few years the major milestones for us
will be the launch of the massive multiplayer online game; and Adult Swim will be where Cartoon Network is now in terms of
the volume of original productions, which will be the ratings-drivers of the
main time slots.