Development Strategies Explored at the TV Kids Summer Festival

With Martin Pope, joint CEO of Magic Light Pictures, and Grainne McNamara, VP of development for live action and animation at BBC Studios Kids & Family, the TV Kids Summer Festival explored trends in how development slates are being crafted.

The session, accessible here, saw Pope and McNamara weighing in on the factors they consider when moving properties into development, staying ahead of market trends and more.

“If it’s going to take us years to make this, then it needs to be something that we can all believe is very high quality, is something which is going to enrich children’s imaginations, is going to take them on a journey, and which is something we can be proud that we’ve done it,” said Pope on the development approach at Magic Light. “Maybe we’ll make something that is high quality, but no one wants it. That would be a copeable problem. What we couldn’t cope with would be putting something into development where we are trying to just do it for some cash and then it didn’t work. Then you’re going to feel terrible. The quality of the storytelling and of what we can deliver to the audience is key. For years, we have been trying to only develop those things that we are definitely going to make rather than try out lots of things.”

McNamara highlighted three pillars that inform her development process at BBC Studios Kids & Family. “We use market research. We stay in touch with the market through our own team and have a continual conversation with the buyers about what they’re looking for. We tap into research; we have an incredible insights team at the BBC. We are very lucky to be able to access that as and when we need it. And then finally, we lean into world understanding and psychology at the time to give a steer on how people might be feeling. If there are a lot of horrible things happening in the world, people sometimes want comfort TV.”

BBC Studios Kids & Family is developing projects from a range of sources. “We generally have a large number of shows on the slate that are at various stages of development, from a basic idea a creator has pitched, a book that we want to adapt for TV, or sometimes we have larger blue-sky ideas that we’d want to tackle that we’ve perhaps leaned into because of our research. We work from the very beginning of the concept, choosing the right writer, working out the world and characters, and then we move on to a script. This can take around six to eight months. And then when we feel it’s in a strong, great place and we’re all comfortable with it, we take it to the market and pitch it.”

Six to eight months is about the average to get that kind of package together at BBC Studios Kids & Family, McNamara said.

“I think we take considerably longer than that,” Pope noted. “But that’s because for most of the time, it’s percolating. For us, a great deal of it is about sitting with a book and thinking about why it’s important and what we can bring to it. We all are involved in thinking through and having those conversations so that there’s been enough conversation before we even get to the point of commissioning a writer, trying to work out what the visual world’s going to look like, those things. We would tend to go to the market much later than that. So, we would want it to be what we want to make before we go out. For us, it’s much more about our focus. What can we do? What does the audience want? How can we deliver for the audience? It’s less about the market. How are we going to deliver and get to that audience and make sure that they are enriched? In the end, we’ll find the money. We’ll find the broadcaster. If it’s really good, we will make it work. It’s much more about, are we telling the right story in the right way for that audience?”

McNamara stressed the importance of research at BBC Studios Kids & Family for understanding where the business is headed. At Magic Light, meanwhile, “we’re not trend-led,” Pope said, “Amid all the maelstrom of conflicting developments and excitements, we have a—perhaps it’s old fashioned, but I don’t think it is, I think it’s actually the future—belief in the desire of audiences to watch and experience a story which is going to take them somewhere they have not been emotionally and imaginatively before. Because we’re doing that and we’re focused on those things, and we talk very much with our partners, we have an understanding of what we think we can achieve and what we can do. There are always changes in technology. We are engaging with all the different ways of doing it, but actually, if we stick to our guns, we hope that we’ll be able to navigate the paths. I remember the days of ‘fewer, bigger, better,’ or ‘better, bigger, fewer.’ It’s all describing the same experience, which is when there is too much to watch for too many people and there is too much choice, how are they going to navigate to the things they want to find? Being able to use IP and use characters with whom they engage is where we are coming from. So we are much more interested in building those character brands. Production for its own sake is not what we do. What we’re interested in is how we expand and explore the world of the Gruffalo and friends. How do we take Zog into different worlds? How do we build Pip and Posy’s world. That’s how we would try to navigate it.”

In the development process, books are paramount at Magic Light, Pope said. “We have to have a sense of how we can reach the audience. With original material, it’s definitely possible, and people should definitely be doing it. But it is important to consider the length of the journey and what it will take, because it is an absolutely massive journey, even from books. What I think is challenging is when people have a fragment of an idea and they want it to become a brand. That is much more challenging.”

BBC Studios Kids & Family is also leaning into the book space. “When the market is rocky, which it certainly is right now, buyers need to know that their investments are going to be given the best shot they can. Having that known IP helps that. We also have IP on our slate that is not market-led. If it’s unique and has a strong enough differentiation to anything else out there, it has just as much of a shot. So we have both on our slate.”

The session then moved to incorporating digital-first content into their development slates.

“We are looking at trying to conceptualize how one can do a digital-first piece,” Pope said. “For independents to understand how we are going to be able to raise enough money to get it out there sufficiently in order to then monetize it is a conundrum we can’t claim to have cracked yet. But it’s one that we all have to. The audience has moved there. They will want to find it on that platform. That platform will probably want it to be there. So, how are we going to make that work? And that’s the challenge. Because if we looking way ahead, either AI is going to absolutely flood YouTube with just enormous amounts of low-grade animated material, which is going be terrifying, and then there’ll lots of richer kids watching things behind paywalls, or we’re going to have to find a different way of doing digital first so that we can deliver great quality to that audience in that space.”

Pope added, “The challenge for us is that we need to think about the public-service broadcasting material we can make at that price point that can reach that audience on that platform. Those are the challenges that we need to face as a creative community.”

McNamara added, “It’s playing around with your content. Being able to test it on YouTube is something you can do with certain characters and see how long they’ve watched that for. The intel we can now have is amazing in that space. We can lean into that. Are they getting bored after 2 minutes? Are they still there after 5 minutes? Do you like the characters?”

As the session wrapped, McNamara and Pope offered up some tips for other content producers in the kids’ business about surviving through the current turmoil.

“If you really believe in the story that you want to tell, it might not be what the market is looking for right now, but if you have that passion ignited in you when you see something, just keep going with it,” McNamara said. “You can find the money. It is out there. It just might take a little longer than it did before. So, stick with it and keep going.”

Pope added, “There is the power of no and the hard decision. In the end, it is about focus. Tons of ideas come to us. Many of them are probably brilliant. The more we say no, the more time we have to think for ourselves. If we focus hard on the things we want to make happen, then we manage that. There are ways, it’s just about finding the right way through.”