Gill Pritchard

TV Kids
Weekly, June 3, 2008

Director of
Children's

BBC Worldwide

With offerings
drawn from the top-rated British channels CBBC and CBeebies, BBC Worldwide is a
leading provider of kids’ content to the international market. As the director
of children’s at the commercial arm of the British public broadcaster, Gill
Pritchard is coordinating the exploitation of the BBC’s kids’ output around the
world, from straightforward TV sales to VOD deals, licensing and merchandising
rollouts, stage shows and more.

Pritchard took
on the position last year after a stint as business development director at BBC
Worldwide, leading the development of Kangaroo, a joint-venture on-demand
player with Channel 4 and ITV. That experience is likely to serve her well as
she looks to expand the BBC’s kids’ fare beyond linear channels in markets
around the world. “Digital is a really key area. As a company we’ve already got
global relationships with iTunes, Yahoo!, Bebo, YouTube. We’re just working on
our first set of deals” for kids’ programming, Pritchard notes.

Building the
U.S. business is also high up on Pritchard’s priority list. As part of those
efforts, her division recently unveiled partnerships with two American children’s
producers: Little Airplane Productions and Star Farm Productions. “One of the
areas I’m very keen to expand is looking for top talent to work with outside
the U.K.,” she says.

In the case of
Little Airplane, BBC Worldwide has taken on the global distribution rights to 3rd
& Bird, a new
preschool series created by Josh Selig, who also created Oobi! for Noggin and The Wonder Pets! for Nick Jr. “Parents and children are
going to absolutely love this show,” Pritchard says. “It’s laugh-out-loud funny
and adorable—what Little Airplane has achieved is truly unique and we’re
thrilled to be part of it.”

More recent
was the Star Farm deal, which involves the two companies collaborating on a
children’s fantasy property, Kaimira. The deal encompasses investment in a TV series, a
massively multiplayer online game (MMOG) and other digital media. “Combining
the MMOG and other [platforms] at the very outset is where we’re trying to move
to,” Pritchard says.

New media
forms just one part of the extensive licensing and merchandising programs built
around many of the BBC’s kids’ properties. Among the company’s biggest success
stories of late is In the Night Garden, produced by Ragdoll, the creators of the Teletubbies. “In the Night Garden launched in the second half of last
year and already it’s become the biggest license in the toy and game market. We’ve
sold over half a million DVDs, racked up numerous awards, including Toy of the
Year for Hasbro’s Blanket Time Igglepiggle, and the books are still holding the
top spots in the children’s book charts with 2 million books printed to date.”

TV sales have
been sealed across the globe, and Pritchard is now looking to replicate the
success of the British retail program internationally.

Charlie and
Lola, based on a book
series, has already fared well outside of the U.K., on both the TV and
merchandising fronts. “We’ve got a lovely product range coming out on Charlie
and Lola,” Pritchard
says about new plans for the brand. “It’s been a real creative challenge to
turn a 2-D flat graphic into 3-D plush. Our creative team has done an excellent
job.”

As Pritchard
develops cross-platform marketing strategies, she works closely with the
company’s Global Channels division, which has begun rolling out a CBeebies
service across EMEA and Asia. “One of the first countries it launched in was
Poland,” where it is now the number one kids’ channel on Cyfrowy Polsat. “We’re
just about to launch the CBeebies weekly magazine and we’re then following up
with DVD releases and the potential for live theater tours.”

Pritchard
continues: “When you own your channels, you can align all the marketing, the
cross promotion, the scheduling, to effectively launch your properties in each
market.”

Using those
advantages is key, Pritchard says, given the current market conditions. “In the
DVD business, prices are coming down but also volumes are holding flat. That’s
traditionally an area that brought in maybe 25 percent commercial income. It
has been under a lot of pressure. And with the restrictions on advertising, we
are seeing fewer preschool slots, which increases the importance of really
selecting stand-out programs.”

Pritchard is
certainly optimistic about the prospects for the current set of offerings, with
a host of animated and live-action properties targeting a range of age groups.
In addition to In the Night Garden and Charlie and Lola, key shows include Animalia, The Large Family and M.I. High, a series produced by Kudos Film and Television, the team behind
BBC One’s acclaimed prime-time drama Spooks.

—By
Mansha Daswani