Q&A: Hasbro’s Stephen Davis

Starting on October 10, 2010, children and families in the U.S. will have a new channel to watch. The Hub is a multiplatform joint venture between Discovery Communications and Hasbro that will offer original animated and live-action series as well as modern classics. Stephen Davis, the president of Hasbro Studios, is responsible for much of the content that will air on The Hub.

TV KIDS: Hasbro is a well-known brand that has very clear attributes. How does that affect Hasbro Studios’ production efforts?
DAVIS: Hasbro has some 1,500 brands in its portfolio and we all grew up with many of them. It is from those that we mine fabulous ideas, a privilege very few companies—even the big studios—have. That is a wonderful position to be in and we don’t take lightly our responsibility to be true to the brands; however, we are also in the business of re-inventing, re-imagining and re-igniting these brands to make them relevant for a new generation. To succeed, however, we know that above all else we must make great television with fantastic brands like My Little Pony, Transformers, G.I. Joe. The rest will follow.

There are four key drivers to our business: TV and film, toys and games, lifestyle licensing and digital gaming. Hasbro Studios has an opportunity to influence all of those drivers, including theatrical, where we work closely with the head of that area for Hasbro, Bennett Schneir. While television and theatrical windowing gives us the ability to leverage the brands, we know we must still do it in the right way, developing the stories around them in unison.

TV KIDS: How do you remain true to the essence of a brand and still make a show that is relevant to kids today?
DAVIS: We have a development structure called the A or core team. It comprises representatives from our brand and intellectual property groups, studio and network development teams and, of course, the showrunner. By putting together all of the constituencies involved in shaping the re-imagination of a particular brand into a phenomenal television property, we are better able to take into consideration all of the key touch points that the show will influence. At the end of the day, the loudest voice at that table is going to be the showrunner, because we’re there to support the creative steward and make sure that he or she has the freedom and the flexibility to make a great television show. The process has worked tremendously well. The proof will obviously be in how the shows do when they air on The Hub and other networks around the world, but we’re very pleased with how our approach has worked.

TV KIDS: What level of sophistication and special effects do you need to include in the shows you produce?
DAVIS: Sometimes that means playing humor on two levels, as in the old Looney Tunes manner. For example, we have a show called Pound Puppies, which we’ve re-imagined based on the ’80s brand. The series is very different and yet it retains a core brand essence that we’ve tried to respect. Still, there is no question the series, while programmed to a 5- to 7-year-old demo, will play on two different levels. It’s aspirational for older kids and delivers humor for families—because we are all about supporting The Hub as a family network with family-oriented programming, where it makes creative sense for a brand. On the other hand, The Adventures of Chuck and Friends is a preschool property and not meant to be anything but entertaining for that demographic. But we are trying to write our scripts and develop our animation style in a way that everyone, including parents, older brothers and sisters, can also appreciate.

If you look at Transformers Prime, which we think will play to a very broad demo, it is going to be entertaining for a 7-year-old as much as it will be for a tween or a teen. That is reflected in the writing and in the animation style—it’s a full CG show—so it’s very sophisticated visually.

TV KIDS: Tell us about your live-action shows.
DAVIS: Family Game Night is an hour-long weekly series, inspired by our very successful family game night promotion that incorporates many different Hasbro games, from Cranium to Sorry! to Trivial Pursuit. We also have a game-show strip inspired by a really fun visual board game called Pictureka, which skews a little younger. We are also developing a kids’ magazine show called Hub World, which has a very cool attitude and covers what’s hot in popular culture, music and gadgets. And, as Margaret Loesch, president and CEO of The Hub recently announced, our first big scripted show Clue is re-imagined around elements of the popular game. It has an ensemble cast of kids who solve mysteries every week.