Guru Studio’s Frank Falcone on the State of the Kids’ Market

For more than 25 years, Guru Studio has been providing children with compelling, entertaining shows in a variety of animation styles, from the hit PAW Patrol to True and the Rainbow Kingdom and several more. Despite the challenges facing the kids’ business, the company’s president and executive creative director, Frank Falcone, is beginning to see some appetite for original ideas in the market. He talks to TV Kids about extending IP into diverse formats, developing ideas in new ways and upcoming projects.

TV KIDS: Did you ever think PAW Patrol would reach the level of success that it has?
FALCONE: In hindsight, it’s a great idea, but at the time there was skepticism. Dogs with jobs? It didn’t immediately look like something that would work. I think the lesson is that you approach everything with positivity, and you need to bring your best to it. So, that’s what we did. We jumped into it positively, and who doesn’t love puppies learning and fumbling their way into adventure? We just focused on that aspect—kept laser-focused on puppies having fun, doing good work and helping people—and figured we’d see what happened.

TV KIDS: Given how fragmented the market and the audience are, if you have a great idea, can it still cut through today? How much more difficult is it to reach PAW Patrol’s level of success?
FALCONE: The path isn’t as clear, and it’s being rewired and changed every time you turn around. There is no traditional methodology, so there are an infinite number of ways to take an idea to an audience at various levels of scale. That uncertainty makes people very nervous about setting out on a path. Every path is unproven, and you must continually adapt and adjust and course-correct your development and your material. You have to listen to your instincts and focus more on what you believe will work, and hope it does. Sometimes what you believe will work may not work in the moment; it may work years later. It’s an everything-all-at-once world, but not everything all at once works, so you have to keep trying at a number of things and hope that a few of them make some progress.

TV KIDS: Have financing models evolved accordingly?
FALCONE: One hundred percent not, and that is the challenge. While it’s hard enough to navigate the audience demand changes, it’s even harder when companies are being acquired and changed. The uncertainty of financing models is far greater than the uncertainty of development because they are not easily tied together. You have to work really closely with people to make sure you are meeting their needs. And you have to listen to what people want and make sure you bring them something suitable.

TV KIDS: What are you hearing from the market? Do buyers want proven IP? Can original ideas still shine through?
FALCONE: I feel like original ideas are starting to percolate again. The risk aversion of the last few years has opened up to a little more optimism, allowing people to try a few things. I haven’t yet seen the financial commitment happening to those ideas, but I think there is some appetite for originals, which is heartening for people who want to bring new things to the market. You can also do it with far less investment. You can try IP out without making a giant commitment. There are enough places to workshop your IP as you develop it. That’s a new thing for a lot of people who like to keep their cards close when developing. One way to do it is by developing live, in front of other people, and getting your community involved. That’s much harder to do with preschoolers because they are not necessarily online, so you don’t quite have that freedom. But with older kids’ shows, developing [a project] live within your community is a new way of bringing projects forward. It means being less precious and having a conversation with the potential audience, the way an indie artist would release a song they just strummed in their bedroom, then two weeks later produce the final version of it. You are developing live and responding to the audience feedback.

TV KIDS: Any projects or shows you can talk about?
FALCONE: We’re excited to continue to develop Spot & Friends, inspired by the children’s book Where’s Spot?, which we’ve optioned from Penguin Random House. We have a new order for shorts for True and the Rainbow Kingdom. True & You are content shorts of about 16 to 20 minutes for YouTube and vertical formats. We’re going to refresh the content and it will be exciting to see what happens when we launch next year. We’re developing a new series called Bark Heads, a comedy about three dog friends who are at varying degrees of wanting to be dogs or wanting not to be dogs. It speaks about identity and about being the best you can be. And we have a new series we just brought to market called Space Slam. It’s a boys’ action-comedy wrestling competition in space!