PorchLight's Jay Jay the Jet Plane

World Screen Weekly,
June 20, 2006

ORIGIN: The series is based on an original idea by Deborah
and David Michel.

TV SHOW: Jay Jay the Jet Plane is a CG series
with 90 12-minute episodes ready and more in production. There will be a total
of 100 episodes by the end of this year. In the show, Jay Jay and his airplane
friends offer preschoolers stories of fun and adventure from their magical home
in Tarrytown Airport, “where imagination takes flight”.

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: PorchLight Entertainment and Modern Cartoons.

MAIN BROADCASTER: Jay Jay the Jet Plane premiered on TLC’s
preschool block, Ready Set Learn!, in
1998 and was switched to PBS in 2001. It currently airs in the U.S. on PBS KIDS
and PBS KIDS Sprout.

TV SALES: PorchLight has secured deals in more than 100 countries,
most recently in Mexico with the country’s largest broadcaster, Televisa.

MAJOR TOY LICENSEES: Jay Jay currently has 50 licensees
worldwide including Action Products Int’l, Fusion Toys, Bentex Group, SaraMax,
Worldwide Dreams, Genius Products, Small World Toys and Wormser Company.

OTHER PRODUCTS: Products range from apparel, plush, toys (wooden and
plastic), specialty and soft goods to games, video/DVDs, electronics, puzzles,
story and activity books, as well as party favors and coin-operated rides. Jay
Jay The Jet Plane Tours America is back on the road this summer with an
expanded list of venues, air shows, local events and other new locations across
the country.

STRATEGY FOR ROLLOUT: “Jay Jay has been a great property for
us,” says Bruce Johnson, the president and CEO of PorchLight Entertainment. “And
there is a story about how it got to us. About ten years ago, a video arrived
and it sat on my desk for maybe a week or two staring at me. I took it home and
showed it to my son, who was three years old. He started running around the
house with his arms spread out saying, ‘Daddy I’m Jay Jay.’ The show was a
fairly rudimentary production—it had stick-model characters that were not
animated but moved across the screen. And there was a voice-over narration, but
none of that bothered my son at all! He was quite taken with the characters and
with Jay Jay himself. The stories were very sweet and had nice life lessons to
them.”

Johnson then contacted the
producer of the video, David Michel, who had never produced anything for
television. Michel’s job required him to travel around the country, and when he
returned home, he made up bedtime stories about an airplane named Jay Jay and
told them to his son. The boy was so taken by these adventurous tales that Michel
decided to invest in producing a show.

“Michel’s vision was that
maybe someone could take this idea and make a TV series and it turned out I was
the guy who helped make that happen.” At the time Johnson placed that first
call to Michel, PorchLight was about a year-and-a-half old. “Our mission then,
as it is now, is to be a producer and supplier of family entertainment. So this
type of show fell right into the business plan of what the company was
attempting to be.”

Johnson and Michel agreed
on making Jay Jay the Jet Plane a CGI 3D
series using motion-capture performance animation. They contacted a company
called Modern Cartoons and the first 26 half-hours were released in 1998. They
aired on TLC’s morning preschool block. “As Jay Jay began to get a following on TLC we were contacted by
PBS,” says Johnson. “They said, ‘We love that show, would you bring it over
here?’ We moved the series to PBS KIDS in the fall of 2001 and it’s been there
ever since.” Jay Jay also airs on
PBS KIDS Sprout.

In 1999, PorchLight
decided the time was right to start rolling out a merchandising program, with
videos, books, plush and then toys. “We put together a toy deal and an expanded
book licensing deal,” says Johnson. “Then we moved into about 30 different
product categories. As we had expanded penetration on PBS we brought more
licensed product and consumer products out.”

The series has sold in
some 100 territories—including all of Latin America, most of Europe and
the Middle East, and India—and products are already on shelves in the
U.K., Australia, India, Latin America, France and South Africa. Mexico and
Singapore are up next.

Last fall, PorchLight
delivered to PBS ten new half hours under a slightly revised banner called Jay
Jay’s Mysteries. “We had always done Jay
Jay as straight narrative without turning
to the camera and interacting with the kids at home,” explains Johnson. “With
the new version we’ve made the characters much more interactive. They ask kids
to solve mysteries about science, weather, time and various aspects of nature
with Jay Jay. What makes it windy? How do plants grow? We try to do them in a
fun and interactive way and the response has been great.”

In Jay Jay’s Mysteries, the producers introduced a Latina character called
Lina. “She’s bilingual and in the U.S. broadcast she is using Spanish words in
her sentences and that has also been well received,” says Johnson.

Johnson and Michel have been very pleased with the way
children have embraced Jay Jay. “There are children that are so attracted to
Jay Jay that he becomes their most important fantasy character, no matter what
else they come across,” says Johnson. “We get hundreds of e-mails from kids
saying, ‘I’m having my birthday party, can Jay Jay please come with his friend
Tracy?’ You realize that you are tapping into something that you can only hope
for when you are making the show, but when you see the results, it’s very heart
warming.”