BBC Studios Kids & Family’s Cecilia Persson on Navigating Industry Shifts

Every children’s media executive probably wishes that they, too, had a Bluey on their slate. Critically acclaimed, widely distributed, an L&M hit and absolutely beloved by preschoolers and their caregivers across the globe, Bluey is among the many crown jewels at BBC Studios Kids & Family. Cecilia Persson, who has led the division as managing director since its launch in 2022, talks to TV Kids about what’s guiding her strategy amid choppy times for the kids’ media segment.

TV KIDS: What has been your top-line strategy for the division amid the challenges the kids’ sector is facing?
PERSSON: We are an end-to-end business with production, marketing, digital, consumer products, development, deficit funding and distribution. That means we can be agile and flexible. The possibilities for partnerships are much more at your fingertips and endless. This has been really beneficial and integral to us over the past three years.

Strategically, one of the things I set out to do early on was to expand our animation slate. We have had great success in preschool, and that’s an area that we continue to build and develop in, but we wanted to get our 6/7-plus [slate] on the map. We announced Vanishing Point at Annecy, coming together with BBC Children’s and Education and France Télévisions. We hadn’t done anything [for this demo] since Danger Mouse, which was a while back. We’ve also worked hard to expand our live-action slate. With The Primrose Railway Children, we took it up a notch. This year, we’ve gone into production on Crookhaven in Northern Ireland. It’s based on the best-selling books by JJ Arcanjo and flips the high school genre with a gripping, morally complex, twisty mystery rooted in identity, loyalty and found family. It’s a compelling coming-of-age adventure with cinematic storytelling and a large cast featuring Dougray Scott and breakout stars from shows like Adolescence and Heartstopper.

It was also important for us to focus on our producer and broadcast support with the setup of a content strategy team, which is also across our international channels.

Having a 360-degree infrastructure has been fundamental for us to grow and achieve the successes we have had.

TV KIDS: How are you working with the team at BBC Children’s and Education?
PERSSON: We work very closely with them. We share a similar editorial passion, approach and excitement for the audiences we serve. Once we hone in on projects that we are both equally excited about, that alignment sets us up in the right direction from the start.

They are supportive of all their production partners; they work with creative teams across the development and production of their commissions and they also often help identify potential co-producers and broadcast partners.

On Vanishing Point, we have France Télévisions, but also the animation is with Watch Next Media in France and Kavaleer Productions in Ireland, so we can tap into the different tax credits and put funding together. All the different components work well together, editorially and creatively. The BBC supports and helps with those introductions and relationships. They champion the content and the production community.

TV KIDS: How vital are co-productions today, not just for financial reasons but also to help make a show that will appeal to viewers in multiple markets?

PERSSON: They have always been incredibly important, but they are fundamentally more important now. The audience is growing up with much more experience and they are savvy about the world. Content becomes more compelling editorially when you have the insights that different co-production partners bring to the table. We developed Supertato with Tencent. It might have been an English book property, but we developed it in tandem with them. That made for a different take than if we had just gone in thinking about the British audience. The sentiments, the comedy, those laugh-out moments translate the world over. It isn’t just about the funding. There is that learning, working with different partners and getting a different editorial take and style that you may not have naturally gravitated toward, but which becomes a much more exciting execution. Ultimately, that’s going to connect more with the audience.

TV KIDS: How are you approaching your development process amid this time of rapid change?
PERSSON: You have to have a long-term vision. We’re creator-led. We’re passionate about the characters and storylines that come from a genuine position, often things that the creators have experienced themselves. When storylines come from something genuine, kids recognize that, find it more intriguing and they lean in more. We also have a great insights team. We examine what our audience is navigating from and identify the white spaces.

We have a show that’s in production, Rafi the Wishing Wizard, which comes from an internal creator. It’s a brand-new animated sitcom that follows 7-year-old Rafi Martin, a determined young wizard learning to use her very own wishing wand. With the help of her dads Jake and Dash, her best friends and her pet cat, Deborah, Rafi begins to realize that the real magic in life isn’t the wish; it’s her family, friends and community. Rafi was born when creator and executive producer Tom Cousins was working in development. He identified a gap for a preschool series about magic and transformation. He was looking through that lens and also thinking about his own upbringing and family, and he envisioned a show centered on a loving and chaotic, relatable family. What if you added magic to that? He took the insight that he gained, but he adapted it, drawing on his own experience, knowledge and characters to create an original idea for a new show. When you watch it, you feel that heart. There has to be a creator-led passion underneath it; otherwise, it doesn’t cut through.

TV KIDS: How are you striking that balance of tapping into the known IP that kids want to keep engaging with, while also being able to champion original ideas?
PERSSON: There is this feeling that if you have something that has a built-in audience, you’re a step ahead from the outset. We do love adapting books and working with authors. We’re working with Lucy Cousins on our new animated preschool series My Friend Maisy with Trustbridge Entertainment. She created this fantastic character with her books, and we are bringing Maisy back to the screen where audiences, for the first time, will hear Maisy and her friends talking; that development is fantastic.

The audience also wants to find characters that they feel are theirs, that reflect what’s happening to them now. You need originality as well as familiarity and comfort. It’s important to have both.

Recently, our insights team showed us some Ampere data, and when it comes down to it, 76 percent of what has been commissioned from 2022 to 2025 is original ideas. There is definitely a demand from the audience.

TV KIDS: What’s been the approach to franchise management and keeping brands beloved year after year?PERSSON: The audience, especially preschoolers, doesn’t perceive TV in the way that you and I did when we were children. They’re used to having access to everything, everywhere, all the time. They want to touch, hold and have the possibility to immerse themselves in the world of the characters they love. We have a clear content strategy. When we look at something like Bluey, we consider all the touchpoints and ensure that if the audience wants more, it’s readily available and easily accessible.

We also produce bespoke content. We filmed the original cast of the Australian version of Bluey’s Big Play and premiered it on ABC. For audiences that don’t have a chance to go to theaters, we brought it to them at home. It’s exciting to be able to do different kinds of executions alongside the 2D animation.

TV KIDS: What’s been your overall approach to YouTube and creator economy content?
PERSSON: We make a lot of content alongside the shows that we produce that drives that experience on YouTube. For Supertato, we’ve done songs and shorts. If you look at it, apart from actual presenters or live-action characters on YouTube, the content that is the most successful in animation often has a life in another area or has transitioned off YouTube in other areas. Kids want to have access to that larger world in one place. The shows that are on linear also exist on YouTube. That is the expectation of the audience. What you show them in those places is what we’re thinking about. What does a kid want on YouTube versus what do they want on linear, and how do they cross-sect? That is something we work on all the time to ensure that we create a combination of what our digital team refers to as fandom, as well as enjoyable moments that complement what iPlayer does, for example, and what builds the overarching brand or experience for the user.

TV KIDS: What are your priorities for the business in the 12 to 18 months ahead?
PERSSON: Successful launches for some of our key titles like Rafi the Wishing Wizard, My Friend Maisy and Crookhaven. We are working carefully with our partners on those. Obviously, there are things in production that still have to go before they are delivered, like Vanishing Point. The constant ongoing thing is pushing your creative standards to keep them high, making sure that you are listening to the audience and that you are reacting to their needs. You have to be able to pivot. It is keeping all of those things together at once. Be present while ensuring that you deliver on both the future promise and what is necessary for success now.

We will continue to collaborate and find ways to work together with partners to get things off the ground, as well as seek out opportunities. That can be quite challenging when you have to work maybe twice as hard for similar results you’d have gotten a few years ago. You have to be open to the new possibilities that are coming. They are there. And keep listening to your audience! They are very savvy and want us to create excitement and new and different things that they feel speak directly to them. If we listen to them, they will tell us what they need.