DHX Television’s Joe Tedesco Talks Channel Rebrands

NEW YORK: Joe Tedesco, the senior VP and general manager of DHX Television, talks to TV Kids about what viewers can expect from all the channels in the bouquet and the types of programming that best fit each brand.

Three DHX Television channels were recently rebranded under the Family banner. Now sitting alongside the flagship Family Channel are the preschool-focused Family Jr. (English) and Télémagino (French), and the action-oriented Family CHRGD.

TV KIDS: What’s the strategy for Family Channel going forward?
TEDESCO: The Family Channel brand is staying the same; we’re not making any sort of fundamental shifts there. With Family, we have learned a lot from our original content. This includes the phenomenon of Family’s The Next Step and the success we’ve had with Gaming Show (In My Parents’ Garage), which plays on Family and Family CHRGD. We learned from those successes and are expanding our content strategy to become more relevant to our consumer base.

Through our learnings, we found that the whole kids’ category has been seeing diminishing viewership. Some of that is from platform proliferation, but we are also finding that kids 6 to 14 are out chasing a lot of different kinds of content. The traditional live-action sitcom, which was grounded in Family Channel, showed some fatigue, whereas episodic, serialized content with more drama, such as The Next Step, has really taken off. So, from an original strategy, we are moving down that continuum.

We have a number of shows in production that speak to that and also have an element of performing arts in them. We’re doing things like Lost & Found Music Studios, which is a spin-off of The Next Step. We’re really excited about that; we think it has all the potential to be a breakout hit. We’ve been in production with a show that we commissioned from Fresh TV called Backstage, which is set in a performing-arts high school—think of a modernized Fame, but with a more serialized component to it. We think it’s important to always have a little balance in the portfolio, so we are in production with a series called The Wonderful Wayneys, which has a great pedigree in it. We have Molly Ringwald and Jason Priestley playing the parents in the show. It’s from Tom Saunders, who was one of the writers/creators of Arrested Development. Even though it’s in the world of a family-based sitcom, we think it’s going to have a very unique perspective with a lot more quirkiness than what you would typically get.

We are aging up the channel in the evenings. It’s a well-kept secret, but the fact of the matter is that Family Channel has always been the number one teen channel in the Canadian marketplace. We generally experience an audience lapse in that 8 p.m. time period, when younger kids are starting to end their TV watching and the upper age of the demo is migrating to other channels. So we saw a real opportunity to target that audience in a more meaningful way by aging up our content. The first show that we commissioned to anchor that older tween/teen block is the new Degrassi: Next Class. We’ve augmented that with our new relationship with AwesomenessTV.

TV KIDS: What can viewers expect from Family CHRGD?
TEDESCO: This channel is rooted more in action adventure. It’s still for the kid who maybe hasn’t migrated up to live action and some of the more dramatic programming that Family has. Family CHRGD is going to have a lot of animation, action and adventure. We’ve got some great properties on there that are doing quite well: PAC-MAN and the Ghostly Adventures, Slugterra and Mattel content such as Team Hot Wheels. The other show that does extremely well on there and we want to build on is Gaming Show. It’s a quintessential show that speaks to gamers. There are lots of girls who game, but traditionally it is more of a boy-skewed activity.

TV KIDS: What’s the strategy going forward for the preschool destination Family Jr. (and the French-language Télémagino)?
TEDESCO: We have some great iconic preschool properties: Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, Curious George. Family Jr. is going to be the launch platform for the DHX-produced new evolution of Teletubbies. From the original creator of Teletubbies we also have Twirlywoos, which is another original show that we are extremely excited about. One of our top performers is the Canadian original production Justin Time.

The Family Jr. channel is all about letting kids explore their imagination. One of the things that really informed us was research we did with moms, which showed us that there’s a real desire to have a preschool channel that wasn’t necessarily trying to age up. That’s actually very common among preschool channels; they try to retain their audiences as long as they can. We are going to be solidly preschool, 2 to 5. Our view is that if kids are ready to move on, there are a lot of television options for them, and we would ideally like to move them up to Family CHRGD and then eventually Family Channel. So we are going to speak to that world of make-believe to have kids really exploring their own imaginations.

TV KIDS: Are you increasing acquisitions across the channels?
TEDESCO: We have certainly expanded our acquisitions, but we are looking at our content budget much more holistically. We have a huge slate of original content that we’ve commissioned. We are out there looking for series and properties that we think are going to be great fits for the brand and engage our audiences and be relatable. I’m not going to quote any magic numbers in terms of how many hours we are buying, but it comes down to: What are we producing? What needs does that fill? What shows are going to complement that in a meaningful way?

We have announced a number of content relationships. We have a relationship with Mattel, which we are getting some fantastic preschool properties from and some boys’ action properties as well. We’ve announced a strategic relationship with AwesomenessTV, where we are not only licensing content (some of it is targeting the teen segment), but we have also struck a co-development deal. We are committed to making a number of series with AwesomenessTV over the next three years. We have tapped into some of the studios. We have Nowhere Boys and Curious George, which we sourced from NBCUniversal.

TV KIDS: Are there any programming needs that you’re currently looking to fill?
TEDESCO: We’ll certainly have programming needs. We know the content that we feel will engage our audiences. Now it’s a matter of going into the marketplace and finding those particular shows that we think will complement our original slate and complement the content partnerships that we’ve already struck.

We have been very open to a variety of formats. For example, we are running The X Factor UK on Family Channel. It’s a bit non-traditional but it’s done very well for us. In terms of the selling community, we are certainly open and very willing to look at alternative formats. We are willing to take some risks on things, too.

TV KIDS: Are there any other areas you’re ramping up post-rebrands?
TEDESCO: We are making some significant brand investments. We have increased the amount of marketing dollars we spend promoting our brands. We’ve had great success with live tours and in-market activities. Last winter we toured with The Next Step and did 49 dates in 27 cities across Canada—all sold out. This summer we did, and have done for the past four years, Big Ticket Summer Concert. This is Family Channel’s concert series. We did seven dates across Canada. It’s all leveraged on our own talent. We are certainly making a lot of efforts to have deep engagement with our brands and consumers.