CCI’s Charles Falzon

June 2007

By Mansha Daswani

Charles Falzon knows a
thing or two about building a successful kids’ property. As president of
Gullane Entertainment for many years, overseeing such properties as Thomas
& Friends, Falzon led the
delivery of more than 1,000 hours of content, 200-plus book titles and some 100
home-video releases. Falzon left Gullane after its sale to HIT Entertainment
and soon reconnected with his old friend Arnie Zipursky, merging his own
Catalyst Entertainment with Zipursky’s Cambium Entertainment to form CCI
Entertainment in 2002. As co-chairman of CCI, Falzon is now employing his
skills on a host of other kids’ series, from preschool animated fare like Harry
and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs
to tween live-action hits such as Ghost Trackers.

TV KIDS: What
are your key properties on the merchandising front?

FALZON: With Harry
and His Bucket Full of Dinosaurs,
we were [at the Licensing Show] last year getting partners and moving things
forward. The strategy now is to continue nurturing and supporting the network
of licensees.

Erky Perky is a property that is having incredible success in
two markets right now—Australia and Canada. We’re looking at some
licenses there. There’s an appetite and a demand by the consumers and we have
to feed it. But we’re also trying to find partners who, as soon as we get the
right awareness in the other markets—particularly the U.S., U.K. and
Germany—would come on board.

On Frankenstein’s Cat we’re just seeing the episodes now. It’s got great
[broadcast] partners in France and the U.K. We’re going to talk to two or three
of our strategic long-term partners. We won’t be ready to do anything on it
most likely for a year, but now’s the time to get partners.

TV KIDS: Is
merchandising more challenging on Erky Perky because it skews a bit older?

FALZON: It
does, and it’s one of the challenges that we’re excited about. Whether it’s the
broadcasters or the licensees or the promoters or the publishers, they’re all
saying, we don’t want to lose kids at the age of 8. There’s this dark phase
between 8 and 16—are they kids or are they young adults? And that’s an
opportunity.

TV KIDS: How
soon after a show launch do you want product on the shelves?

FALZON:
[Licensees] don’t want to come on until there’s recognition, but by the time
there’s recognition, they need another year to get product on the shelves—by
then it might be too late. [You have to try to get] the commitment from the
licensees as close as possible to when it goes on the air so that you’ve got
product on the shelves…a year or two after that.

TV KIDS: How
important is the DVD market?

FALZON: It’s
more important for preschool properties. DVD is still one of the pillars—[the
others are] TV, publishing and one major toy line. But now, because of all the
incredible competition for shelf space, you don’t use DVD as much as a brand
builder.

TV KIDS: You
mentioned the four pillars—I imagine new-media content is increasingly
becoming a fifth. What are you doing in that space?

FALZON: We
have a unit here called CCI Digital that is doing nothing but focusing on
online opportunities. It’s two-pronged. [The first prong] is primarily
supporting the TV experience—extending your core brand through a website.
That’s old news now. That’s not a big revenue opportunity, although we license
it out to broadcasters around the world.

The exciting opportunity
is in developing new forms of entertainment. We have games—about 36 games
are going to be launched in the next year or so on Harry alone.

I think that for the older
audiences, electronic [media] is a pillar. For preschool, give me a book that a
grandmother can read [to a child] over and over again, and I’ll take it any
day. Now, [preschoolers] are going [online], they are playing the video games,
but I don’t think the parents go there first. The parents go to their trusted
broadcasters, to the books, and to their secure video labels.

TV KIDS: What
are the major challenges facing indepen­dent kids’ distributors today?

FALZON: The
biggest is shelf space. On the other hand, we have less to put on the shelf.
When I ran a big company and I had 50 properties at any one time, I knew that I
wasn’t going to get most of them on the shelf! We’re selective, we’re targeted,
we’re versatile, and we have the brain power in here, if I could be so bold, of
any large organization. CCI can do what the bigger companies do with a handful
of brands and not have to worry about the tonnage and the overhead and being
bogged down with operational inefficiencies.

TV KIDS: What
do you enjoy most about being in this business?

FALZON: I
lecture at a university here and I always tell this story: the moment I
realized I was happy with my work was one day many years ago when I was walking
through a Toys “R” Us and a little kid ran down the aisle saying, “Mommy, there’s
James!”—one of the [Thomas and Friends] trains. That moment was really special to me.

I like building. The
people who create these shows, working their ass off to create 52 half hours,
what happens with their creation is dependent on how well we promote it and
market it. It’s a real honor to be able to work with incredible creative
talent.