Q&A: CAKE’s Ed Galton

The CAKE catalog features a mix of established IPs such as the Angry Birds and Total Drama franchises and original shows like Pablo. While known brands may be easier to place in today’s challenging market, the company remains committed to championing fresh, original ideas that it falls in love with, and that includes an emphasis on shows that have diverse talent attached and at their heart. Ed Galton, CEO, talks to TV Kids about the company’s brand-building strategy.

TV KIDS: Can you give examples of how you have been building and maintaining brands in today’s market?
GALTON: It’s about finding the right platforms and broadcast partners to work with to help champion the show. We can do so much on our side, but then it’s really what our broadcast partners can do with those projects and how they help them sustain a life with their audience. We can give them as much ammunition as possible to help them succeed. That’s generally in delivering a really good show that has great storytelling and characters. Ultimately, we must figure out how to connect with the audience. We’re always working with the broadcast partners to help them do that, but we’re also finding that in this new world, where you can share more, putting the shows on multiple platforms allows for greater success. An example of that is when we sold Lucas the Spider to WarnerMedia. We were able to share those rights not only with Cartoon Network and HBO Max, but we also had the opportunity to put the show on Netflix. We noticed that when it went on Netflix, the viewing figures went up on HBO Max. We can also help brands by placing content on multiple platforms.

TV KIDS: What benefits does CAKE’s distribution business derive from a greater willingness to share rights?
GALTON: There’s a give and take on everything. I’ve been an advocate of non-exclusive rights for as long as I’ve been doing this. Especially in the kids’ business, the need for content to be everywhere is really important. Where the market is a little bit different now is that we’re finally seeing a willingness to share more than ever before. Part of that has to do with the economics. Platforms are saying, if we can pay less, but we can share windows, that’s a win for us, and it’s a win for you. Is it a win for us, economically speaking? Maybe a little bit, maybe not; that’s still yet to be determined. But if the show we’re putting on the platforms can be more successful as a result, then that’s the win. We’re seeing more of that happen now in the economic downturn than in the past. People are starting to see the data, and it supports the idea that they don’t really have a degradation of audience by having these non-exclusive rights with particular brands.

TV KIDS: Do you see opportunities in AVOD, FAST and gaming?
GALTON: It’s early. I know everyone’s excited about being in the FAST channel space. If you talk to people in other genres, they’re seeing a better return. The advertising market hasn’t matured enough yet. While there are going to be opportunities, and I’m a big believer in the AVOD space, I don’t think it’s provided the type of return we would hope for so far. I certainly wouldn’t want my business model to be reliant on AVOD revenues. Moving down the line, once it matures, it’ll be an interesting business.

We’re looking at the gaming space more. We understand the power of Roblox. We’re trying to figure out how our content can live on that platform. The challenge is how do you monetize that? How do we turn that into a meaningful business? We are having some conversations in that space, but they’re still in their infancy.

TV KIDS: How has CAKE been embracing diversity in its storylines and through the talent it works with?
GALTON: That’s an area we’ve been strong in for some time now. We’ve worked on shows like Pablo, which we fell in love with. It features a boy who has autism. All the voice talent and writers were somewhere on the autism spectrum. We feel strongly about promoting shows like that and seeing those come to life. That’s been a really amazing experience to be part of.

Nikhil & Jay is a project that we’re working on about South Asian and British cultures combined under one household. We worked with Triggerfish Animation and Netflix on Supa Team 4, which is about four female teenage African superheroes. I also want to mention Super Sema, an African animated kids’ superhero franchise from an all-female studio, Kukua. We’ll continue looking for shows with a broad spectrum of diverse backgrounds in the characters in front of the camera and those who worked on the shows.