Rich Ross and Gary Marsh

April 2008

This month, Disney Channel in the U.S. celebrates its 25th birthday. Since its launch in 1983, the channel has gone through various incarnations, from a premium service to a basic-cable channel, spinning off the preschool service Playhouse Disney and the cartoon channel Toon Disney, but all the while concentrating on offering quality commercial-free programming for kids. Disney has helped launch the careers of several stars, including Jennifer Love Hewitt, Christina Aguilera, Justin Timberlake, Hilary Duff and the latest tween sensation, Miley Cyrus, a.k.a. Hannah Montana. And let’s not forget the stars of the Disney original movie that became a worldwide sensation, High School Musical. Today there are 27 Disney Channels around the globe, eight Toon Disney channels, ten Playhouse Disney channels and 19 Jetix channels, reaching more than 600 million viewers worldwide. Rich Ross, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide, talks to TV Kids about his vision for the future of the channels, and Gary Marsh, the president of entertainment for Disney Channels Worldwide, shares his passion for the shows he oversees.

Rich Ross

President of Disney Channels Worldwide

TV KIDS: What are the core strengths of the Disney channels?

ROSS: The core of our channels, like others, of course, is content. And what 2007 showed is the power of our live-action series and movies, which have become renowned, and our preschool, which had its biggest growth ever. And that was an incredibly compelling story both in the U.S. and around the world. We want to augment that with really powerful animation, which is really important for us. When you set the bar as high as we have set it, and you meet it or go be-yond it, you realize that in the diversity of content [you create] there are shows that become household names and the most favorite content for kids.

TV KIDS: Will the animation skew a little younger than the live action?

ROSS: I would say the answer is no. We really look at what we make as prime-time animation, in the same way as we look at our series as not being kids’ series but sitcoms. And that’s not saying the animation we’re doing is The Simpsons, because it’s not. But it’s just the idea that the sophistication of the comedy and character development of the animation would fit handily as a lead-in to Hannah Montana and not just as a show that you would see on Saturday morning or at 3:30 in the afternoon.

TV KIDS: The Disney brand has some very specific attributes. Is that in any way limiting to the kind of variety you try to put on the channel?

ROSS: It really isn’t. People thought early on that that was a handcuff, but for me it was a gift. It gave us the acknowledgement from our consumers that they expected high quality and certain attributes to be in our programming and that it could be for kids and their families. We are exploring subjects that we think make sense for kids 2 to 14. We know that younger siblings watch with older siblings. So if a 4-year-old watches Hannah Montana, he or she may not get everything that is going on, but a 12- or 13-year-old is definitely going to get it. We know teens are watching it. When you go to a Hannah Montana concert or a HSM concert, parents are singing along.

For so many adults it’s about remembering when a summer job was the most important thing in the world. And you go back into that nostalgia about first love. And your daughter is looking at it as what’s in the future. And a future that is optimistic in a world that often can get very dark. I feel very lucky and proud. There’s nothing wrong with being optimistic—actually, if we’re not, we’re in big trouble.

TV KIDS: What successes have there been among the international channels?

ROSS: We launched three new channels, in Poland, Turkey and South Africa, and they have quickly marched to the front of the line, being either the number one or number two channel in the market. And seeing that is exciting because in those territories we are brand-new. Then seeing the Disney Channel in the U.K. with its ratings through the roof and becoming the number one channel in the market was encouraging, or in Italy where we are as well. What’s probably the most exciting for me is seeing the international channels now create original programming so that we are an exporter and importer of programming. Ours is a global business, and I believe we are light-years ahead of others because we have set up an infrastructure where we have global programming and have not waited for something to just happen.

You have to set up a process, and we have original-programming people in many of our 27 offices, and we are training them. What is great about our business is that we did short form and long form way before people realized that mobile phones or online would sell. And we have a group in Austin, Texas, where we are shooting a short-form series, As the Bell Rings, that was developed from Quelli dell’Intervallo, produced in Milan. And our heads of short form for Japan, Australia, the U.K. and France have been to Austin because we want them to be smart and self-sufficient so they can go out and find other properties and develop and produce them in local markets. Making television is no different from making anything else. You have to train people, and that is what I am most proud of, that and the fact that we are the number one [children’s cable] network in prime time in the U.S. And I’m proud that we have a global organization that creates content and gets it out there to every platform imaginable and looks at things to see what works in other places and not just [what works] here in the U.S.

TV KIDS: Are you looking to replicate the model of Quelli, finding shows that can be produced by several of your channels?

ROSS: Yes, and we produce more short-form programming than probably anyone else because many of our channels are commercial-free. We have the actual airtime available, which makes us unique as a business model. We went into production on Quelli in Singapore just for mobile. Our Southeast Asia feed goes to about nine countries, and so to put out something in Chinese didn’t make sense because the feed is seen in Malaysia [and other territories where Chinese is not spoken]. So our partner in Singapore said, how about doing a version for mobile? And it really works because of the length, and I’m really excited that that’s where it’s starting.

TV KIDS: Kids are watching the channel; they are watching online; Disney shows are always among the top ten sold on iTunes. What are you learning about how your audience is consuming your content?

ROSS: I’m a big believer that kids under 14 look at television as a shop window for their favorite shows. And then they want to elaborate on that experience. They want games; they want the experience in many different ways. And, clearly, for the biggest properties we have—like HSM—they want HSM on Ice and more, and they can’t get enough. But the shop window is still television. I see that being the case in many countries where multichannel television is prevalent.

What is definitely evolving is that they are not stopping at the television, so that we as a company and a content provider have to make sure that if we don’t have a channel in China, we do a deal with the lead broadcaster so that it becomes the home of HSM. In its first airing, 50 million people saw HSM in China. So we have to come up with organic and smart ways to make sure our content gets out there, whether it’s on our channel…or with partners on terrestrial, or phones, or online. Our viewers want what we have and we have to make sure that they can get it when they want it, whenever they want it.

TV KIDS: How has the success of HSM become a blueprint for other multiplatform properties that you are going to develop?

ROSS: There was a plan to release HSM 2 that was 360 degrees. We went to every country and said, we want to work on this from the beginning. We want you to own this plan. We want you to come up with ideas. We shared ideas from the various markets. We actually had a 24-hour phone call where we opened the lines and market by market came in to discuss with the global team what they were thinking and they shared all the data. We compiled a big book [with all the] new ideas. That’s how we look at it now. We have a global business, we don’t have a U.S. business. Our content doesn’t have to work everywhere, and often it doesn’t work everywhere, but that doesn’t mean it can’t or we can’t look at it that way. Quelli dell’Intervallo is one of the greatest hits of 2007 in the U.S. and it was developed in Milan. You can’t look at Milan as being any less than Burbank or anywhere else. We’re in a global marketplace, but everybody lives in their own home and watches their own channel, and you have to make sure you connect with them on a local level as well as knowing there are a lot of global things that they share together.

Gary Marsh

President of Entertainment for Disney Channels Worldwide

TV KIDS: You recently visited China. What kind of production do you have going there?

MARSH: We are beginning a lot of production in China. We are already making some animated series there. It’s the beginning of the real global focus of our company. Since Rich [Ross, the president of Disney Channels Worldwide] has come on board, we have really tried to become a global network. And that means that [for all the Disney channels there is] one philosophy and one vision. And it all starts with content. That means that we start development on every project with the same questions: What is this show about? Will it appeal to our core audience globally? How does it showcase our brand promises? And the way that we make sure that happens is through a process. Historically, both we and other networks [would make a show] and then send it off to our channels in France, Italy, Germany and Spain, and they would put it on. We have fundamentally changed the process so that when we develop shows, and the idea originates here oftentimes, we will send out the scripts for global feedback. Once we decide which ones to produce, we send the pilots out for global feedback. And we put together a fairly extensive document that incorporates both the creative thinking and the cultural thinking from all the countries around the world where we have distribution. So it’s not by accident that these shows work globally. It’s by design, and that’s why our success ratio around the world, particularly with the live action, has been so strong.

TV KIDS: When you are casting a series or a movie, do you know what you are looking for or does that come to you when you see the kids? Is it the chicken or the egg?

MARSH: [Laughs] That is the alchemy of talent! Hannah Montana is the best example, because if you had read that script you’d know what the challenge was. We needed an actress from 13 to 15 years old who could sing [and carry] a sitcom on her shoulders. And we had this audacious belief that we could create a fictional pop star and turn her into a real-life rock star. If we had said that out loud to people they would have thought we were insane. But that was our goal, and that’s why it took a year to cast that series. Because we couldn’t find the girl who had that charisma, whose persona transcended the Hannah role and just burst off the screen in a way a pop star does. And that was Miley Cyrus, but I can’t even tell you how many kids came singing their little hearts out and tried to get the role.

We have a process [when we cast]. We put out a breakdown and it lists the project, it lists the characters and the qualities we are going for, and then we see 500 kids and try to sift through that to find the one character who will really embody this role. And we just are disciplined enough not to say “Yes” before we get to the right person. Which is a hard discipline, because everybody wants to move things forward. And the producers attached want to go, go, go!

TV KIDS: Because time is money.

MARSH: Yes, time is money and the producers say, What do you mean you are going to wait another six months to cast this role? Partly you need to wait for another crop of kids. At this age, kids mature and new kids show up within six to nine months. Miley was a great example. When we first met her, I think she was just short of 12 and we felt she was a little young. So we didn’t consider her seriously at that moment. We thought it was too big a risk, she had never really acted seriously, but she was persistent. We hadn’t found the person we wanted and so she came back three or four more times. In that time she had gotten nine months older. And there is a level of maturity that happens at a certain age. She started to become a much stronger presence in the room. And at some point we decided this was the girl. She really captured the quality of the character and the charisma that we were searching for in this role.

TV KIDS: For The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, did you know you wanted twins?

MARSH: Zack & Cody was a little bit different. And we are doing this a little bit more now. We had met the twins when they were about eight or nine, and at the time they were too young. And they came back to us a few years later and in their case we did the reverse. We made a deal to develop something with the twins, and then we pitched out the notion of twins to a number of our core writer-producers and let them come back to us with an idea. So it works both ways. I’d love to have the talent going in on every project. Talent is king. At the end of the day, you can build around talent. Not that ideas are a dime a dozen, but ideas are easier to come by than talent.

TV KIDS: You deal with the tween age group, and in a six- or nine-month time frame they change physically and they mature. What is the challenge with having the show grow with the young actors?

MARSH: It’s a really good question, and that’s why a lot of people love animation! [Laughs] They never grow old! I always wanted to do an animation series where you age the look of the people over the course of three or four years. SpongeBob would now be 12 or 24—I’m not sure what age he was to begin with! But I always thought that’s an interesting concept to let people grow old in animation. Think of The Simpsons—Bart would be in a retirement home!

Basically, what you are trying to do is tell stories that are emotionally honest to the characters you have cast. When they grow older, you have to change the story lines a little bit. You don’t want to tell a story that is over the emotional horizon line of your audience. On the other hand, you want to be true—if you have a 15- or 16-year-old kid who is in the lead of the series, you want to tell a story that feels honest to who they are. So at the end of the day, if you are not honest, the audience will rat you out. They will feel that all of a sudden, all the relatability that you have created for that character disappears when you start telling stories that seem emotionally dishonest to the age of the character.

Having said that, there are certain kinds of stories we don’t tell—they don’t fit in to who we are as a network. That’s partly why we don’t cast 25-year-olds in the leads. You can’t tell stories about a 25-year-old without dealing with issues that are just not appropriate for our audience.

TV KIDS: What kind of environment do you try to create for your writers and producers?

MARSH: We are in a unique situation because we have been remarkably loyal to the people who have worked with us. The people who started with us on Even Stevens, Marc Warren and Dennis Rinsler, after 65 episodes of Even Stevens they went on to work on That’s So Raven for 100 episodes, and now they are working on Cory in the House. We try to create an atmosphere of freedom, knowing that we have boundaries we live within. But at the end of the day, we try to challenge the writers to create something that is fresh and unique within those boundaries. It means that from a plot point of view, we may tell the same story in more than one series, but the challenge is to tell it differently, with a fresh perspective. And because a lot of these writer-producers have been with us for a while, and have kids and watch our network, they know what the challenge is. So they become part of our family, and that really helps the creative process evolve in a very organic way.

TV KIDS: What do you have in production that is different and that you are excited about?

MARSH: One of the things I’ve been most excited about is something called Quelli dell’Intervallo, which is a short-form series that started in Italy. In 12 countries around the world, we have all localized and adapted Quelli for our own market. In the U.S. they’ve called it As the Bell Rings. We’ve taken this same premise of the time between classes at school; the same format, which is a single shot framed through the window of the corridor; and largely the same stories—some identical, and some have been adapted for each region—and we each cast local talent and created our own mini-star system on the strength of this short-form series. For us, it turned out to be a wonderful talent-growing operation because we found one girl, Demi Lovato, who plays Charlotte in our version of it, who has gone on to become the star of our big summer movie Camp Rock, playing opposite the Jonas Brothers. We’ve just finished a half-hour pilot with her called Sketchpad. So for us to be able to use the short form to groom talent is a huge bonus. And for the rest of the Disney channels around the world to be able to use the short form to build stars when they don’t have as much of their own original programming is a giant success story.

The same idea executed differently played out recently on High School Musical 2. There were 17 different territories that did a localized music video using a local pop talent. We recently played HSM around the world and featured 17 of those international videos on Disney Channel. So again, this notion of a global vision is not just hyperbole; it’s how we program the network across the world.