DIC’s Heyward

May 2006

By Anna Carugati

One of the big
stories in the children’s television business this year is the three-hour
Saturday morning block that DIC Entertainment will be programming on CBS
starting in September. CBS’s Saturday Morning Secret Slumber Party will target
6- to 12-year-old girls and will offer them a mix of animated and live-action
shows. Andy Heyward, DIC’s chairman and CEO, is very excited about the business
opportunities this new block will offer his company.

TV
KIDS: How
did the CBS deal come about and what new doors does it open for DIC?

HEYWARD: We met with [CBS Corporation’s
president and CEO] Les Moonves at MIPCOM last year, right at the time when
Viacom was being split up into two companies. We made a deal to partner with
them. We would go after an older demographic. The Nick Jr. block, which currently airs on
Saturday mornings on CBS, is for 2- to 5-year-olds. I always felt that’s not a
good age group for children’s commercial television; that’s better for PBS. The
advertising on commercial TV is very predatory and little kids can’t
distinguish content from commercials.

We decided to make an all-girls schedule because we saw an
opportunity. There is too much boys’ programming in the U.S.—Cartoon
Network is all boys. [4Kids TV on] FOX is all boys. Kids’ WB! is all boys. So we thought, Why
not make one network that targets girls? The block will start with Madeline, which is a younger-skewing show,
and we will work all the way up to a live-action dance show at the end.

It’s a very good deal for our company because it provides us with a
pathway to market our brands. We can blend content and distribution. The only
people who have that today in the U.S. are Disney, Warner Bros. and
Nickelodeon. This deal puts us in a really good spot. We have nearly 3,000
half-hours—it’s the largest independent catalogue. It’s the largest
independent catalogue, just behind Disney and Warner Bros. We have a multi-year
deal with CBS, so it’s a way for us to plan—it’s not like selling a show
one season and not knowing where you are going to be the following season. This
block allows us to come up with a [distribution] strategy.

TV
KIDS: What
will the block’s programming consist of?

HEYWARD: We are launching three new
animated shows: Horseland, Kooky Kitchen and Littlest Pet Shop. We will also have three shows
from our catalogue: Sabrina: The Animated Series, Trollz and Madeline. CBS enables us to launch new
brands. Whereas we might have been able to launch only one new brand a year,
now we will be able to launch three new brands a year.

One thing that is meaningful for the block is Kooky Kitchen, a comedy-adventure series built
around cooking and healthy nutrition. That is a very prominent subject right
now because of childhood obesity and the sedentary lifestyles of kids. When you
have some of the [year-round] advertisers in the kids’ business like Kellogg’s,
McDonald’s, General Mills, Burger King, Kraft and Nestlé that are very focused
on putting their commercials in an environment that is positive from a health
and nutrition point of view, that is a big plus for us.

We are also going to be producing 52 30-second spots all built around
health and nutrition. That’s an important part of our CBS block as well.

TV
KIDS: And you will also be acquiring series for the block?

HEYWARD: We are sort of a gatekeeper now.
We see a lot of product that we didn’t see before. We get pitches from toy
companies, from comic-book companies, from the Hollywood agencies, even from
the movie studios that don’t have a broadcast network. Sony brings us
programming. There are a lot of people bringing us shows that we wouldn’t have
had access to before.

We have also put together our own ad-sales organization. We hired Karl
Kuechenmeister, who used to do sales for Cartoon Network. He is senior VP of ad
sales and marketing, and Eric Greenwald has been hired as senior VP of
new-media sales. The CBS block will be supported by online communities and we
are selling the block as a mix of broadcast and online. We’ve coined the term
“broadline.” Everything is being sold as an integrated product of television
and online together.

TV
KIDS: What shows do you have in the pipeline?

HEYWARD: Horseland is a big one. We noticed
www.horse land.com had 2.5 million registrants in it. When something becomes that
big, we have to go take a look at it. It’s an iconic brand and there is a
strong connection between girls and horses. It starts out when girls are very
young with My Little Pony, but by the time they are 4 or 5 years old they are done
with that because it’s too babyish. They are ready to move on to something
else. So Horseland
is much more edgy, it’s a little more irreverent, more reality based, and the
stories are for an older child.

We have top writers, the stories have all the elements of crisis and conflict
and jeopardy, but they also have a lot of emotion to them. Every episode offers
a wonderful lesson. One story is about death. The word “death” is never used.
One of the kids in Horseland has a cat who is going to die. It starts off with
narration about every year there is a winter and a spring. In winter there are
endings and in spring new beginnings. This cat had gotten very sick, and in the
end when the time comes for it to go, it walks off into the snow and we never
see it again. I read the script and it brought a tear to my eye—it was
wonderful.

TV
KIDS: Will you be modifying Horseland’s online community?

HEYWARD: We will have to build up this
online community. There is a little too much going on there; it’s for older
girls. We will have to make it a little friendlier for younger girls.

TV
KIDS: What other shows do you have in the works?

HEYWARD: We have live-action show called Cake, which is all about a girl who is
a 13-year-old Martha Stewart. She teaches kids everything about do-it-yourself
and arts and crafts. It fosters a lot of creativity and individuality and
demonstrates things that girls can make on their own at home. Cake’s motto is, “You can’t buy
individuality, but you can make it!” Cake was brought to us by two designers from Mattel and
it just knocked our socks off. We saw it before we had the deal with CBS, and
said, “If we have a place to put it, we’ll do a deal with you.” Then, when CBS
happened, we contacted them and now the show is in pre-production.

We’re doing a show called Dance Revolution. Dancing is a phenomenon that is
very popular with kids right now. So we’ll do a live-action show, a dance
competition.

TV
KIDS:
Another big initiative for DIC in the past year has been a deal you made with
McDonald’s.

HEYWARD: We are the global brand managers
of McDonald’s. They were really under fire. When you talk about childhood
obesity, they are the first name everybody comes up with. So they started
adding salads and fruit and yogurt to their menu. I think they are trying to be
good corporate citizens and they are showing that there are good alternative
choices available.

We went to them and we said, instead of this cockamamie system you’ve
got right now of licensing when somebody comes to you and says we want to do
this toy or that toy, why don’t we create a brand-new program that is doing the
same messaging that you are trying to get across in TV commercials and on your
tray liners and cups and whatnot? The message is going to be about a balanced
and active lifestyle, keeping kids aware of healthy eating habits and getting
them up and active and out. So we are doing a branded line of activity toys,
which will be called McKids. An action figure is not an activity toy, a
skateboard is. A fashion doll is not an activity toy, a jump rope
is—anything that will get kids to burn calories.

TV
KIDS: The
business has changed so much since you started.

HEYWARD: We’re not just a producer of
cartoons; we are now managing brands.

TV
KIDS: Do you still get a kick out of all this?

HEYWARD: I get up every day like it’s my
first day at work. I’ve had two jobs in my life. I started at Hanna-Barbera
when I was out of school, and five years later I started doing what I’m doing
today. I’m very fortunate.