Nancy Fowler

World Screen Weekly, September
21, 2006

Nancy Fowler

Head of Global Sales

DIC Entertainment

Like so many working mothers,
Nancy Fowler wanted to balance her career and her life at home. She found a way
of satisfying her professional ambitions and her motherly instinct when she
joined DIC Entertainment. She commutes from her hometown of Toronto to Los
Angeles in her position as head of global sales, overseeing consumer products,
television and home entertainment. “I started at DIC in consumer products and
there were five people,” she says. “Now there are 30 in the group. It’s been a
huge success story.”

Fowler had built up an extensive
career in licensing and merchandising working at Alliance Atlantis, Viacom and
Paramount, where she was responsible for the global businesses of franchises
such as Sabrina the Teenage Witch, Star
Trek and South Park. When Andy Heyward, the chairman and CEO of DIC, asked her
to join the company, Fowler was intrigued by the prospect of managing
properties like Strawberry Shortcake,
but what convinced her was “Andy’s enthusiasm and his vision for the company—we
see ourselves less as a TV company and more a brand management company,” she
says. “I liked the idea that DIC is lean, nimble and quick and that we
could get a jump on the competition because of that.”

DIC, in fact, beat out several of
the Hollywood studios by successfully bidding for the Strawberry Shortcake franchise, which has already yielded more than $1.3
billion in merchandise. “When the property first came out in the early ’80s, it
made about $1.2 billion, so we have surpassed the original,” says Fowler.

Even more exciting to Fowler is
DIC’s new Saturday morning programming block, KOL Secret Slumber Party on
CBS, sponsored by AOL’s kids service KOL. “When
you think about the volume and quality of programming coming out of DIC in the
next 24 months, it’s really unprecedented for the company.” The block consists
of Madeline, Sabrina: The Animated
Series and Trollz and new shows: Horseland, Cake and Dance Revolution!
Horseland grew out of horseland.com, which
has 2.5 million girls registered. Given the popularity of the website and girls’
love of horses, “we felt there was a huge opportunity in the marketplace,”
explains Fowler. “If you are a seven-year-old and you love horses, you have two
choices, either the real animal or My Little Pony. But when girls outgrow My Little Pony, where do they go? Horseland.” DIC has produced the Horseland series featuring CGI and traditional animation and set in
the greatest stable ever. Cake is a
live-action show-within-a-show about a teenage girl named Cake, who with her
three best friends hosts a how-to arts and crafts show. And Dance
Revolution! is a dance competition
inspired by the hit video-game franchise.