Peter Schube

The name Jim Henson is synonymous with some of the best-known brands in family entertainment, from the Muppets to Fraggle Rock. The legendary puppeteer’s legacy of providing high-quality entertainment for kids’ and families is being continued today at the company he founded more than five decades ago. As president and COO, Peter Schube manages the day-today activities at The Jim Henson Company.

TV KIDS: How has the company evolved since the Henson family reclaimed control from EM.TV in 2003?
SCHUBE: [At the time] we had a very clear strategy, which was to focus all of our efforts on developing new properties. To achieve that we made the company smaller and more focused. We achieved this by aligning with the strongest distribution partners for each part of our library. Our kids and family properties were placed with HIT Entertainment, Warner Bros. took international television rights for our fantasy properties and we extended what was then and still is a very successful video partnership with Sony for certain other titles. By doing this we were freed up to focus all of our resources in two areas: the development of new properties, and the development of our proprietary animation system, HDPS, the Emmy Award-winning Henson Digital Puppetry Studio. So starting in 2004, we put our distribution rights out for five-year terms to these very strong partners, and we focused our efforts in those two areas. Rolling the clock forward, when those third-party deals expired, we had developed and were in production on Sid the Science Kid and Dinosaur Train for PBS, using the by-then perfected animation system. When our library and distribution rights were returned to us from those third-party deals, we had these two wonderful new programs to offer to the marketplace as well, which then gave us both the impetus and the ability to relaunch our own distribution and merchandising efforts internally.

TV KIDS: Now that you do have that internal infrastructure, are you looking at representing third-party properties?
SCHUBE: We like to think that we will be prolific and productive enough to fill our own pipeline, and up to this point we have been, but we are always looking for interesting opportunities to partner with third parties, either on production or distribution of their properties. In our merchandising group we have a fairly active umbrella which we call HIP, Henson Independent Properties, where we represent third-party properties.

TV KIDS: In terms of your own content production, is there a certain number of shows you like to have in development or production at any one time?
SCHUBE: We don’t operate on the basis of a fixed or firm ratio of projects placed into development in order to achieve a certain level of output or production at any one time. We like to make sure that we have a robust development slate of projects that we are passionate about and that fit creatively into our brief. We like to play to our strengths. We tend almost exclusively to develop franchise type properties, create fanciful worlds filled with compelling characters, and we try and execute on them as well as can. We always strive to achieve the highest level of quality. We develop ideas internally and we collaborate with established talent in the film and television world. Dinosaur Train is a project that we produced in collaboration with Craig Bartlett, who created Hey Arnold. Sid the Science Kid,on the other hand, is a project that literally was born in our offices.

TV KIDS: What are your plans for library properties, like Fraggle Rock?
SCHUBE: Fraggle Rock is in widespread distribution around the world. We’re always looking to place it with new partners and broadcasters in territories where it may not currently be on the air. It will be part of The Hub’s launch on 10/10/10 here in the States. We have a feature film we are working on with The Weinstein Company, and out of our U.K. office we’re developing an animated spinoff property focused on the Doozers with our partners in Canada, Decode, which is a DHX company. Fraggle Rock is one of those properties and one of those programs that touched generations of people. We are constantly gratified by the breadth and depth of the fan support.

We’re also working on a feature film and an animated television spinoff of The Dark Crystal. We developed a property for Sprout called Pajanimals, short song interstitial pieces. We’re now developing this property into a long-form series that we’ll be taking to market. The fun for us about the focus that we have on franchises and fanciful world properties is that they tend to sprout new branches and whole new trees themselves over time. Fraggle Rock was originally produced in the mid ‘80s and 25 years later we’re working on a feature film and a television show, while the original is still on the air

TV KIDS: What are your priorities for the next year?
SCHUBE: We’re producing 26 new episodes of Sid the Science Kid and we’ll have news coming out shortly on Dinosaur Train. We have a show that we’ve produced with Tiger Aspect out of our U.K. office for the BBC, Ten and Nick Australia called Me and My Monsters. We have a series of development projects that are in various stages that will likely be skewing to a slightly older audience than our preschool series Sid the Science Kid and Dinosaur Train. What we’d like is to be in production on both Power of the Dark Crystal and the Fraggle Rock feature films in the near future. We’re also spending a lot of time internally on several online projects. We find it to be an interesting platform and it helps us perfect our techniques for concepts and programming.

To watch a clip of Dinosaur Train, please click here.