Chasing the Multitaskers

Children are agile early adopters of new media, so channels and producers are serving up multiplatform content.

By Bill Dunlap

January 2007

The world of kids’ entertainment these days has truly been turned inside out and upside down by the new-media explosion. Production companies now develop multiplatform brands rather than TV shows. Internet websites are spawning TV shows and brands instead of the other way around. AOL is inspiring original content for network television. Producers are coming up with original one- and two-minute programs for delivery by cell phones. Websites like AtomFilms and YouTube are turning into launching pads for series. Websites for TV shows are launched before the shows make their debut instead of waiting for an audience.

In short, there is no standard operating procedure, few rules and, new-media executives say, it’s only the beginning.

One of the most active players in the world of kids’ brands and new media is Cartoon Network, which operates multiple broadband streaming services, multiple kids’ websites, online gaming, a range of cellphone products and video on demand, while at the same time it is planning an interactive TV channel and its first massively multiplayer online game (MMOG).

“I think we’re only starting to scratch the surface,” says Paul Condolora, the senior VP and general manager of Cartoon Network New Media. “The overarching theme of our decision-making is making sure our brand is relevant in kids’ lives. There’s no resting on your laurels. The competition is intense and is going to remain intense. We have to continue to come up with new and exciting ideas for our audience.”

One of the more ambitious undertakings mixing old and new media is the three-hour Saturday morning programming block KOL Secret Slumber Party on CBS, a joint venture of CBS, DIC Entertainment and the AOL kids’ site KOL.

“There’s no such thing as a typical deal anymore,” says Malcolm Bird, the senior VP of AOL Kids & Teens, who notes that he is regularly surprised by the proposals coming AOL’s way almost every day. Bird gives a thumbnail sketch of the CBS/DIC deal: “CBS gets three hours of educational and informative programming, DIC gets to partner with KOL and gets KOL programming and direction into the TV side and programming and platforms on the online side, and built-in audience from KOL. On top of that, I get this great TV platform and have it branded KOL because DIC is not a consumer brand. And we have this great content on the Secret Slumber Party website that is entertaining and fun, but also has a health and exercise angle that flows throughout the block.”

DIC threw itself into new media several years ago, says Nancy Fowler, DIC’s head of global sales. “We came to the conclusion that if we wanted to stay relevant, to reach our audience, we needed to come up with strategies that would take our brand and carry it through all those other media, such as the mobile phones, online, television, home entertainment, merchandise, etc.”

DIC is supplying most of the Saturday morning programming, but is partnering with KOL on the live-action series CAKE and Dance Revolution. “They have a show hosted by DJ Rick,” Fowler continues. “Over a million kids listen to his radio program online. Being able to drive an audience like that to our television audience and vice versa made a lot of sense. Not only are they supporting all the web initiatives to the block, but DJ Rick is the host of Dance Revolution, a show within our block. So everybody’s getting something out of it.”

A WORLD OF POSSIBILITIES

Some insight to the ways producers in the kids’ arena see and use new media can be gleaned from some recent launches.

Condolora says Cartoon Network’s launch of the animated series Class of 3000 last November was the network’s most comprehensive multiplatform effort to date. “We started with a great show,” Condolora explains. “André Benjamin”—[aka André 3000]—“of the group OutKast wanted to tell his life story through animation. When we greenlit the show, we recognized a lot of new media opportunities. From the beginning, the New Media Group was in the meetings with the network, with André Benjamin and [producer] Tommy Lynch, outlining how we’re going to promote the show and what new platforms we’re going to be engaged in.”

The Classof3000.com website was launched two months before the show. “The goal there is to get our audience acquainted with and enamored of the show and the characters, and create buzz,” Condolora says. “What we concentrated on was creating a compelling game, a create-your-own-music game called Funk Box. What makes it unique is the range of musical tracks you can create, with seven different layers to each track, with each layer representing one of the characters of the show.”

On Cartoon Network Video, the network’s streaming site, which launched in September, exclusive behind-the-scenes video was put up about a month ahead of the show launch. “After the show launches we include it on video on demand because by that time people will be talking about it but it won’t be on our air every day,” Condolora continues. “On mobile, what we did that we’ve never done before was to give away a free ring tone. On the website we gave people the ability to download the show theme and use it as a ring tone. We have various mobile offerings on Cingular, Verizon and Sprint where clips of Class of 3000 are included with other Cartoon Network clips.”

Condolora emphasizes that Class of 3000 is a television show first, and that the content for other platforms is tailored to the strengths of each. “Mobile is about personalization, so we offer ring tones, but it’s also increasingly about watching video, so we offer that,” he says. “VOD is to increase sampling and give people a chance to follow through on what they’re hearing. The website is about building buzz through a compelling application, which in this case is Funk Box.”

Also in the mix are video podcasts and downloadable episodes via the Apple iTunes Store and Amazon Unbox along with a pending deal to offer downloads of music from the series.

When AOL put up KOL and the teen-oriented Red services three years ago, it immediately started thinking about original programming, Bird says. “That gives you content and it gives you a library of [intellectual property] assets you own, control and can have secondary revenues against. We developed a number of cartoon properties for KOL, the most notable one being Princess Natasha, which became incredibly successful on KOL and then was bought by Cartoon Network. Natasha is the first real web property to go from the web to a traditional media outlet like TV and then be fully licensed.”

Princess Natasha is featured in interstitial segments in the Secret Slumber Party block on CBS and has been sold to the ABC in Australia. “We’re just getting into the secondary revenue streams—home video, international program sales, international licensing and merchandising,” Bird says.

AOL has signed with Gaffney International Licensing and has begun an aggressive licensing program in Australia, Bird says. “We would make this content even if we weren’t going to get the ancillary revenue streams. But once you own these IPs and develop them, like everybody else, you can exploit them on different platforms in different territories. We’re like new networks but we’re interactive and we’re on the web.”

One of DIC’s properties on the CBS block also originated on the web. “Horseland came from horseland.com, a very successful tween website where girls who love horses go to play games, talk about horses, post pictures,” Fowler says. “One of our staff writers, whose daughter is crazy about the site, brought it to our attention. It was a great web concept that translated nicely into a TV series. We saw a successful website and a hole in the marketplace from a merchandise standpoint, a product line as well as a story. There wasn’t anything for that 6 to 11 girl.”

The website has been revamped to skew slightly younger than it used to and DIC is working closely with the developers to provide animation that matches the television creative. “You have to have a very open mind,” Fowler continues. “You can’t just say, ‘I’m in the TV business.’ We’re in the brand-management business and we look at all the various ways our brand will communicate with the ultimate consumer.”

A similar story is told by Emmanuelle Namiech, the director of acquisitions and co-productions at Granada International, regarding the preschool series Boowa & Kwala. It started with a website devoted to silly songs written by the British musician Jason Barnard and images created by his wife Véronique, who is French. “They created a website in 1999,” Namiech says. “They encouraged web users to feed them comments and suggestions. There was a very interactive relationship between the web users and the creatives really from day one. The website became very popular and they now have two and a half million people a month making four million visits.”

Interest in the site spawned books, CDs, plush toys and the interest of the French TV producer Philippe Mounier. The series soon will be on TiJi in France, one of the Lagardére Networks, and Granada International is introducing it globally later this year.

Platform savvy

Mel Alcock, the senior VP of commercial affairs for Jetix Europe, says new media have revolutionized the launch process. “The gatekeeper function of broadcasters has been turned on its head and completely eroded,” he says. “When you’re now launching an IP, first you find a medium—the device or the platform—that is essentially preferred for that IP. The preferred route or device is the one that lends itself to the intellectual property that you are releasing. For example, one particular property, Pucca, its animation—particularly clean, colorful, simple—lends itself to mobile because of screen size. Pucca works exceptionally well within the mobile environment.”

The popularity of new media also compresses the various launches. “You used to see a launch period of one and a half years; now it’s almost simultaneous across all platforms,” Alcock says. “There might be an exclusive offering on a preferred platform, but in a short period of time, let’s say a month, that property would be widely available.”

Brian Lacey, the executive VP of international for 4Kids Entertainment, seconds that thought: “It was generally assumed in the industry that the new-media elements would support the TV content. However, we see this older model of brand building undergoing radical changes. For example, at 4Kids we created the Viva Piéata television series alongside the Xbox 360 game of the same name with the same universe of characters. In addition, the new Chaotic series was conceived as a tri-media platform from the outset, with a card game, an online game and animated TV series all designed to work together, as well as to stand alone as entertainment platforms.”

Until very recently, the cell phone wasn’t a medium for reaching kids, primarily because younger kids didn’t often have access to the latest generation of phones that could download video. That’s changing, especially in Europe and Asia, but big users of mobile delivery are still targeting older kids and the parents of younger kids.

At Sesame Workshop, creator of the long-running educational series Sesame Street, there are no illusions that its preschool audience owns cell phones. “But we believe there are learning opportunities for kids and their parents by making this content available in places where we couldn’t do it before, and at times and places that are more convenient for them,” says Jeffrey Fleishman, the assistant VP for digital and interactive media. “Now with cell phones you can have Sesame Street in a doctor’s office waiting room. Or you can have Elmo talking about healthy foods when you’re in the supermarket.”

Sesame Workshop is placing clips from the show, not content made for mobile, on Verizon’s V CAST wireless broadband service and has plans to add other wireless carriers. In November, Plaza Sésamo, the Spanish-language version of the series, was added to V CAST.

Aardman Animations, the Bristol, England, company behind the popular feature films Chicken Run and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, uses mobile downloads to reach the older kids, up to and even past their teens, that make up its core audience, says Helen Brunsdon, the company’s broadcast and development manager. “It really is teenagers and older who are our key target,” Brunsdon says. “Even though younger children have mobiles in this country, it’s really more parental-based. It’s not really to watch content yet.”

Angry Kid, a caustic comedy series about a young British ne’er-do-well, is Aardman’s top seller on mobile and a popular destination on the AtomFilms website, Brunsdon says. “Wallace & Gromit is on mobile. Morph, our oldest character, we reformatted him for mobile. Angry Kid and Morph are one minute long. Off the back of Were-Rabbit we launched Creature Comforts, one of our TV series. We can put little promos on the mobile content. We’ve been doing seasonal promotions too. Around the FIFA World Cup we did some brand-new content for Angry Kid based around football. We also do Valentine’s Day and Halloween promotions.”

In September, Aardman launched its own mobile TV channel on the Orange TV service in the U.K. “We call it Aardman On the Go,” Brunsdon says. “It’s a continuous one-hour loop. We’ve reformatted a lot of our content into small, bite-sized chunks. We found that people only view for a couple of minutes, so what we tried to do is design the block as every two minutes you’d see a really diverse amount of content, not just one piece, because you might get bored with that.”

Alcock says kids’ use of mobile is growing rapidly in some territories. “Certainly with regard to parts of Europe, namely Italy, penetration of mobile is quite staggering, and it’s getting that way in the U.K.,” he says. “With the mobile space, we will tend to use properties that have an older skew. It’s all about being selective.”

Braving Broadband

Nickelodeon is putting most of its new-media eggs in the online basket, with the October launch of TurboNick 2.0, its feature-laden broadband video platform, but in Latin America broadband penetration is lagging, and MTV Networks Latin America is reaching out to its Nickelodeon fans on mobile and lower bandwidth websites.

Luis Goicouria, the VP of digital media for the group, says it will be launching TurboNick in Mexico in February and in other territories later in the year, but he notes that broadband penetration levels are below 30 percent in every territory.

“Cable penetration in Latin America is a fraction of mobile-phone penetration, which is over 200 million, more than have fixed lines, actually,” Goicouria says. “The best way to promote a show is to partner with a wireless operator. They place it in a premium spot on their WAP [wireless application protocol] deck, its menu of downloads. If, when a person clicks on ring tones, they get a menu that says SpongeBob or Nickelodeon ring tones, then you’re in business. You have to give them a reason to put you there, so we come up with promotions and reasons to put us there, like the movie or a contest.”

Cartoon Network is looking ahead to mobile as a platform. “We’re proud of what we’ve done on the website. We want to replicate that success on the mobile side,” Condolora says. “It’s premature to talk about it, but we’re focused on doing things in the mobile space that have never been done before, taking advantage of our brand and the animation platform and creating content on wireless. It will take advantage of what the smart phones allow you to do.”

DIC’s Fowler sees kids’ mobile lagging in the U.S. “In North America, we’ve been waiting and waiting for kids to want to download cartoons on their cell phones, and they’re not quite there yet,” she says. “When we launch properties we have the wallpapers, the ring tones; we’re there but it’s not a big part of the business at this point. We’re planning to do CAKE, Dance Revolution and Horseland next year; we just haven’t taken the leap. In Europe, when it comes to children’s entertainment, it’s a much more sophisticated business equation.”

Television still drives the creative process of developing a kids’ property, but executives say new media are having an impact on that aspect of the business, too.

“The new media are having a huge impact on the entire design matrix for brand development and execution,” Fowler says. All media types—TV, print, online and product—are factored into the process with content and messages tailored to the strengths of each medium, as well as brand position and objectives. At DIC it’s still very much a television play. But when we sit around the table at the very beginning of creating a strategy, we consider all those other distribution channels.”

Bird, at AOL, says a number of new decisions have to be made. “Nothing happens unless you have a spectacular property,” he begins. “Then you decide, What am I going to manufacture? Am I going to make 22-minute episodes, or 11-minute episodes? The 11-minute episodes stream a lot better on the web. And I can take two 11-minute episodes and put it on TV. Do I make two 10-minute episodes and a 2-minute interstitial so that I can then sell the 2-minute interstitial to a cell-phone company?”

ringing in content

Kevin Gillis, the executive producer and managing partner of Breakthrough Animation in Toronto, says Breakthrough is building mobile vignettes into episodes in the third season of Atomic Betty.

“One way is to build mobisodes into the tail end of the show,” Gillis says. “You might then take them off and only have them available on broadband or on mobile. The content usually will emanate from something that happened in an episode so if you watched the episode you will get an enhanced experience, maybe a joke or a song or a game. You have to be aware of that so that you build it into the script and into the structure of the show so that there would be things in the body of the show that we would pick up later on in the corollary content.”

The process isn’t cheap. “We’re doing a set of mobisodes now for Atomic Betty, and they’re coming in at a little less than $20,000 each. We’re creating content. It’s all brand-new animation.”

Many of the companies in the kids’ business maintain a separate P&L for their new-media departments although they recognize that all new-media elements can have both a promotional and a revenue component.

“Overall, new media is viewed as a stand-alone business,” says Cartoon Network’s Condolora. The various components roll up into a separate P&L. Mobile is purely business-oriented. It’s not promotional based. Cartoonnetwork.com is a combination of both. But given our size, 5 or 6 million unique users a month, [we have] a significant base to create ad revenue. Video on demand is more pure network extension, truly a TV experience.”

rights of passage

Condolora seeks to participate with all properties in all platforms, but he notes that rights issues sometimes limit that. “For example, our anime content, our Toonami brand, we license that from Japanese license holders. We could create promotional content on the website for those shows, but when you get into the mobile space, which is not promotional but is pure business, our rights end there.”

He notes too that advertisers are asking for content opportunities on multiple platforms and some are creating original ads for the web space. “With streaming we’re supporting two of our key constituents, the audience and the advertiser.”

MTV’s Goicouria has a digital P&L and he looks to web and mobile for revenues as well as promotion. “Our business model, when we’ve been launching broadband sites for MTV, is less ad sales and more a co-branded sponsorship model that we’ll partner with a cable operator or a telco. They pay us a certain amount of money to co-brand a site with them.”

The mobile business is tougher in Latin America because more than 80 percent of users opt for a prepay plan with their carrier. “People who prepay their phones have lower average revenue per user,” he explains, “which affects us because we make money on screen savers, wallpaper, ring tones, all of that. Someone who uses prepay will buy less of that stuff than a subscriber.” Lower penetration of hi-tech mobile phones also holds back business.

Goicouria doesn’t expect to sell a lot of ads initially when TurboNick launches in Latin America. “Where we will make our money is in the partnerships we’re going to do with cable operators on their broadband services,” he says. “If you get your broadband from a particular cable company, there will be an area within our TurboNick site that is reserved for just those users. Most of the site will be free for anybody, but there will be a VIP section. And there will be some branding on the site of the cable company. They’ll pay us for the co-branding and for the right to have exclusive content within their VIP area.”

Breakthrough’s Gillis points out that many broadcasters are demanding a multiplatform approach to kids’ shows. “When you go to sell a show, certainly in Canada and the States, the broadcasters want to pick up on the broadband content,” he says. “They want to control not just how the content rolls out on their television screen, but how it can be streamed on their web presence or be available on portable devices.”

There is no doubt that since children are among the early adopters of new technologies, they will continue to get programming and games on whatever device or outlet they want. Producers had better be ready to keep up with them.