Jetpack’s Dominic Gardiner

Jetpack Distribution, led by CEO Dominic Gardiner, continues to take a boutique approach to expanding its slate, which already stands at some 1,500 half-hours. Earlier this month, it landed the rights to the 2D show Alice’s Diary, a co-production between Portugal’s Sardinha em Lata, Spain’s Alice AIE and Brazil’s Gepetto Filmes that uses art to help upper preschoolers discover the world around them. The company, which has long been known for its strong lineup of kids’ comedies, is also working with U.K. outfit Paper Owl Films on the engineering and science-focused Florida as it looks to cater to broadcasters and platforms eager for curriculum-inspired shows. TV Kids caught up with Gardiner to talk edutainment and his perspectives on navigating the business today as an independent distributor.

TV KIDS: How are you approaching the landscape today as an indie?
GARDINER: The way we’re approaching it is the way we set out to eight years ago. It was to be boutique in the sense that we’re bespoke and specialist. That appeals to a lot of people. Not everybody buys their clothes at Walmart. Some go and have them tailormade. Those are the extremes of the market: your one-size-fits-all jogging pants with a nice elasticated waist or something tailor-made for a special occasion. We try to exist in that end of the market. The creatives and producers we meet appreciate that personal service. We’ll never be as big as the big players who can buy brands. If you’ve got plenty of money, you can buy success. The challenge for us is we have to grow a lot of the things we do from seed. I can’t call some kids on a YouTube channel with 25 million subscribers. If I do, my conversation is very different than some of the bigger players who’d call and say, We’ll give you $10 million up front, but you have to give us everything in perpetuity. A lot of people would say, Why not? We’re not a bank; we don’t have enormously deep pockets, so we have to build relationships. We have to help them get from ground level up to the next step. You may get to a point where you have to sell. A show sometimes benefits if it has a bigger player behind it. I haven’t found the next Peppa Pig yet. I still look at its journey. You appreciate that as things get bigger, there’s a need for big. But I also like the fun end, the startup phase.

The challenge is always capital. It’s always being able to bankroll and take risks. That’s the advantage the big players have. Many people say, with all the consolidation, independents will fizzle it out. No. The bigger companies do struggle to break through and find the innovation required. Disney managed to do it, but many successful ideas stem from small, independent outlets.

TV KIDS: You say boutique player, but you’ve significantly grown your catalog over the last few years!
GARDINER: We want to make sure we have enough content and enough diversity of content for everyone. For every buyer, there is a particular show. They know it when they see it. Every buyer has a unique taste. Some like to buy things that have been successful somewhere else. That’s easy. But for every one of those, there are those who are very much about crafting their brand and finding a show that enhances their brand. You can’t just have one show and sell it to the world. There’s too much nuance between the buyers. You have to have multiple options. We need to make sure we have all bases covered. We love selling. But we also love shopping. We love working with new producers. We love working on ideas that are no more than sketches and ideas. That’s where we get an opportunity to play in the creative space a little bit. We, as a distributor, are a good sounding board; do you think this will sell? Well, if you make the boy a girl and the dog a cat and take the horse out, it will be a hit! [Laughs] And put more pigs in it!

The catalog, for me, is a curated, dynamic object. I’ve been a buyer. We don’t want hundreds and hundreds of pages in a catalog. We want something that is current and alive. When we meet buyers, what excites them more than anything is seeing something new and exciting. Something that makes them delighted but also maybe confused. You want that interaction with them. Buyers want to share that expertise as well.

TV KIDS: Tell us about some of the STEM/STEAM titles Jetpack is showcasing.
GARDINER: Florida is about a little girl who lives with her auntie, who happens to be an ex-NASA scientist. It’s based on a real NASA scientist. Our little Florida lives in Aunt G’s repair shop. Kids learn about where the item came from, what it was used for and how it works. The emphasis is on storytelling, but the “how it works” bit educates kids about engineering and science. There is also a great focus on imagination-based science and how you can invent a new tomorrow.

I was pitched the show by Grainne [McGuinness, managing director at Paper Owl]. I was in love from the start. I studied engineering at university. It’s a show that can excite kids about engineering. The fun bits, like how magnets work and what a pendulum is—the real-world applications of science. You want to get kids to think about how things work. [For] the kids today, there’s no information you can’t find. But the application of things in the physical world is something that kids probably don’t interact with in the same way as when we were growing up. Toys were based on scientific things. Now everything just comes out of the screen. We wanted to have principles of coding in the storytelling. We also wanted to match that with more classic science as well. So, we have new tech and old. We’re developing that with Paper Owl. It’s the most obvious STEM show we have.

We have just launched Alice’s Diary. It’s the A of STEAM. The strapline is: Understanding the world through art. Alice’s wonder, inquisitiveness and unique view of the world are shared with the audience through her off-beat, engaging conversations with her mum. And as Alice talks, she draws, and her pictures become a captivating visualization of what she’s thinking. It’s animation about art. It’s one of those shows you’re drawn to because it’s so beautifully designed.

One of the most successful shows we have about kids’ questions—how, what, where and when—is Daisy & Ollie. It’s kids asking questions, and the episodes try to answer those questions. It’s on season five. It’s on Milkshake! in the U.K.

TV KIDS: We saw that scramble for educational content at the start of lockdowns. Have broadcasters and platforms kept up that demand?
GARDINER: There is a lot of demand. There are a lot of broadcasters that are already explicit with that demand and have been that way for a long time. Even those who have experience doing edutainment shows stepped up even more. I think there was demand from parents as well. And the industry reacted quite quickly. Even commercially minded broadcasters would have noticed it was very popular. At the end of the day, they’re all in the business of eyeballs. If edutainment works, then why not do more of it? The slight problem we have is that when you’re pitching, your idea can be compared to preexisting ones quite quickly. Once you even utter the word STEM, they may say, We have a STEM show! It’s frustrating because you know the world can exist with more than one STEM show. There’s almost that quota people have in their heads. It’s not strictly related to the audience’s appetite. And some channels could have edutainment all day. You have to be very distinctive. With Florida, we’ve been very specific with the engineering [elements]. Sometimes too broad of an approach can mean you’re not necessarily standing out enough. You’ve got to be quite precise and have a real mission. The audience will appreciate that. And the buyers appreciate that. That point of difference needs to be clear in any educationally driven series. But the younger you go, you can’t be too specific. If you have a show about numbers, there’s only so much you can do before you start getting quite technical. The younger you go, the broader the shows are.

TV KIDS: As kids age up, I know it’s harder to get them to respond to these themes. Are you seeing edutainment mainly be focused on the younger preschool/bridge demos?
GARDINER: We’re not seeing much of it [for older kids]. To follow a curriculum, you have to have a broad approach because not all kids develop at the same rate. Some subjects would be tough to get across in a story. It becomes factual. There’s a lot you can do for younger kids. You can have a balance of story and education. And entertainment is the tone of it; it envelops it all. You can be completely madcap and irreverent and still have facts in there that kids can get out of it. When you get more into, this is a factual show, the older kids appreciate it, but it really is education, and the entertainment gets dialed down. You have to be clear and honest with older kids. This is a factual show, and it will help you with your schoolwork. The prominence is always the younger end. I’d say 95 percent of preschool shows have some loose curriculum, whether it’s soft emotional-social learning or science, etc.