TVKIDS
Jon Rutherford, president of global rights, franchise and content strategy at Boat Rocker Studios, offered up insights into what’s driving that company’s kids’ operations at the TV Kids Festival today.
In conversation with TV Kids’ Kristin Brzoznowski, Rutherford highlighted the models that are working for the company’s kids’ and family business, which includes the Dino Ranch brand. You can watch the session here.
“Boat Rocker has a broad array of different types of content and strategies,” Rutherford said. “Kids’ and family shares the same overall message and strategy as our other genres across scripted and unscripted. That is primarily to work with the best creators out there, help support that vision, tell great stories and get them to audiences around the world. We’re a global entertainment company. We do all parts—creative, production, distribution, brand.”
The company’s positioning across multiple sectors helped it to weather the challenges of last year, Rutherford noted. “We have a well-diversified portfolio. Within our kids’ and family slate, we do original IP, and we’ve had long-running series that continue to do well for us, global sales across a vast catalog and service animation work. Our most recently posted results as a public company had an increase year over year from the last one. We’re looking at where there’s opportunity and not just following traditional ways of doing business. We’re thinking about all different avenues where you can succeed—until it pivots again, and then you start to monitor that and adjust.”
In the kids’ and family arena in particular, Boat Rocker is tapping into its Canadian roots while also accessing the benefits of having offices in London, L.A., New York and Hong Kong.
“We’ve always had a philosophy to look at different ways to greenlight production. Our development comes in so many different shapes and sizes from so many different sources, both internal creatives and external partners, in different countries. That allows us to think differently in terms of the opportunities that exist. We play a role in the financing of so many of the productions. Being rooted in Canada, we’ve always had to put financing together from multiple sources. It’s not just how we develop a great piece of property, but how do we get these into production and to an audience?”
Asked about the types of projects Boat Rocker looks to align itself with, Rutherford noted, “We look at anything that comes in from a 360 approach—creative, distribution and sales, brand and the ability to get something moving forward. It always starts with a compelling story…the merits of the creative itself and the people we’re working with on it. Then, we go through this circuit within the company, getting all the different teams to weigh in on what’s important to them. Is it sellable? Could we get a return on our investment? Not just make our money back, but actually turn it into a profitable business? Are there extensions into ancillary avenues across toys and products? Some projects might just reviewed by a smaller committee and some go deeper into the 360. Some might just be a sales opportunity. When we do feel strongly that a project warrants an investment to go into our typical internal greenlight process, then we have the utmost confidence that we’ll have the best success with it—or as much as you can predict.”
Brzoznowski asked Rutherford to discuss the company’s approach to franchise management as it builds out brands like Dino Ranch, created by Matt Fernandes, co-founder of Industrial Brothers, a studio Boat Rocker owns a stake in.
“Franchise to us is all pieces working together to create something that will thrive in a marketplace more than just the individual pieces on their own. In those early stages of the creative development on [a project like] Dino Ranch, you don’t want to integrate too many voices in a room; you want the creative vision to breathe and come out naturally and organically. But once you’re into production or preproduction, you start to incorporate feedback and the expertise from all the different groups involved. In order for it to be a global franchise, it needs to work in multiple important countries around the world. Understanding those notes and feedback from the sales team is super important. Franchise management is making sure that all of those pieces come together, work well together and understand each other’s needs and motivations while respecting them at the same time. Above everything else, the creative integrity of the project is at the forefront.”
Rutherford also weighed in on how Boat Rocker is adapting to technological changes in animation pipelines, including AI. “It’s important for us to understand it—how to use it and harness the opportunities. We believe in its strength as a tool. We don’t want it to replace human creativity. It’s exciting when the creative community uses it as a [means] for exploration. Some of the creative team have explored things like ChatGPT, Midjourney and some of those text-to-image prompts and are exploring the capabilities of what it could do. I’m sure there’s other tech that they are exploring beyond that. There are legal issues we have to be aware of—copyright and making sure that we are not using anything that’s not ours. At the same time, when the tools are used in the hands of artists, something magical is unfolding. How do we support that? How do we harness that? We can’t ignore what will become a large part of the industry in years to come.”
Boat Rocker similarly tapped into YouTube opportunities early, beginning with The Next Step, which is now in its tenth season. “This is a talent-driven show, finding and working with the best dancers. A lot of them have social followings. We utilized YouTube very early on, having supplementary content, building a community through social, creating bespoke clips and promotional materials; everything that would build upon that audience. From that point on, we started understanding the power of YouTube.”
The launch of Dino Ranch, a CBC and Disney commission, also included a YouTube component, Rutherford explained.
“Now we’re launching content on YouTube first and exploring where it works, where it doesn’t and manufacturing those greenlights with YouTube content at the forefront and then turning that into pieces of content that we can sell further to other partners. We’re looking at all different avenues in that space. YouTube is so essential to the kids’ and family sector, as is other social such as Instagram and TikTok.”
On looking to the creator economy as a source for content, Rutherford noted, “not everything will transfer over. It’s easy to see a set of unique views and numbers and think, Wow, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it will succeed in other parts of the business. If there are ways to take that IP and work with that influencer and develop other pieces of content and materials that could go toward a larger avenue with different partners, then certainly we do that. We have to look there now more than ever.”
