{"id":10034,"date":"2016-05-06T10:13:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-06T14:13:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/dhx-medias-steven-denure\/"},"modified":"2016-05-09T09:44:24","modified_gmt":"2016-05-09T13:44:24","slug":"dhx-medias-steven-denure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/dhx-medias-steven-denure\/","title":{"rendered":"DHX Media\u2019s Steven DeNure"},"content":{"rendered":"

Steven DeNure, the president and COO of DHX Media, talks to\u00a0<\/em>TV Kids\u00a0about the latest activities across its four main divisions: DHX Studios, DHX Distribution, DHX Television and DHX Brands.<\/em><\/p>\n

Celebrating its tenth birthday this month, DHX Media has spent the last decade cultivating its businesses to become a key international player in the production, distribution, broadcast and licensing of children\u2019s and family entertainment. Along the way, it has acquired a number of companies and libraries, amassing a catalogue of more than 11,500 half-hours of content, including the globally recognized brand\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em>, which it recently remade with state-of-the-art special effects.<\/p>\n

\"***Image***\"TV KIDS:\u00a0<\/strong>What does it mean to you to be celebrating the tenth anniversary of this company, and what\u2019s driving its current gains?
\nDENURE:<\/strong>\u00a0Of course we\u2019re immensely proud of what the team at DHX Media has achieved over the last ten years, growing one of the world\u2019s biggest content libraries with globally recognizable brands, establishing four production studios, adding broadcast to build a vertically integrated company and employing some of the smartest, most talented people in the business\u2026but we\u2019re not finished yet!<\/p>\n

The kids\u2019 industry is entering a very exciting phase, with fantastic opportunities for leveraging our business and our brands. We are at the start of a global journey for properties such as\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em>,\u00a0Twirlywoos<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Make It Pop<\/em>, and our library has standout content that is proving to be the first port of call for emerging players in the SVOD and AVOD space. We have grown our production capabilities with 2D and 3D animation as well as live action.<\/p>\n

We recently unveiled our online multiplatform kids\u2019 network, WildBrain, propelling it from incubation to the next stage of growth, offering DHX-library and third-party-owned videos for kids from 2 to 10 years old.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:\u00a0<\/strong>How did the idea come about to bring back\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em>?
\nDENURE:\u00a0<\/strong>A few years ago, a number of important preschool properties came into our library with our acquisition of the assets of Ragdoll Worldwide. Ragdoll is a great company that not only created\u00a0Teletubbies\u00a0<\/em>but also other well-known shows, including\u00a0In the Night Garden<\/em>. DHX has made many acquisitions over the years, and what we\u2019ve been looking for overall are libraries that fit into the library we\u2019ve been building and properties that we think are meaningful in the long run and, on top of that, properties that we could look at revitalizing. In the case of Ragdoll, all of those boxes were checked, and, in particular, that last one. We believed at the time that\u00a0Teletubbies\u00a0<\/em>would be right for a relaunch.<\/p>\n

The old\u00a0Teletubbies\u00a0<\/em>episodesare still on the air in many places, but they\u2019d all been produced pre-HD. From our point of view, there was an opportunity to update them. There is still massive viewership on YouTube for\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em>, and we thought that was a really good proxy for recognition and popularity. When [shows] aren\u2019t on television and you\u2019re not getting ratings, how else do you know whether they\u2019re important to parents or kids? To us, that was an important piece of our due diligence.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong>\u00a0How did Darrall Macqueen come on board as producers?
\nDENURE:<\/strong>\u00a0First of all, they are among the best producers of preschool programs. We had the privilege of working with them on\u00a0Topsy and Tim\u00a0<\/em>and understood their talent and the rigor with which they approach things. In terms of the team here, it was initially Josh Scherba, who runs DHX Distribution, who suggested we talk to Billy [Macqueen] and Maddy [Darrall] at Darrall Macqueen.<\/p>\n

When we went to them and said that we were thinking about doing a new series with the Teletubbies, they said, You can\u2019t do that! The Teletubbies are perfect the way they are!<\/p>\n

We started a really interesting dialogue about, first of all, why would you relaunch\u00a0Teletubbies<\/em>. That made us think hard and deep about \u201cwhy\u201d and if so, then what it would look like. We had tried to uprez some of the old episodes, but we realized that taking existing standard-definition television and uprezzing it is not the same as producing a beautiful new 4K show.<\/p>\n

They dug in creatively and became interested in and inspired by what we would do next with the Teletubbies given the technology available to us. Darrall Macqueen did a great job of saying, Let\u2019s embrace the current technology, using miniature sets and green screen. It\u2019s the [same] technology that\u2019s been developed for big films like\u00a0Harry Potter<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Lord of the Rings<\/em>\u00a0to combine fantastic miniature sets and massive costumed characters, the big and small together, to create a magical world. We are thrilled with the way the show looks. We think that it plays extremely well. It\u2019s a fantastic update and tribute to what was a great and groundbreaking show the first time around. In some ways, for preschool it\u2019s broken new ground again.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong>\u00a0What led to the recent realignment and rebranding at DHX Studios?
\nDENURE:<\/strong>\u00a0DHX is a highly dynamic environment and we\u2019re always changing, reorganizing, acquiring things here and there and rethinking the company. In some ways, that\u2019s consistent with the massive change that\u2019s going on within the filmed-entertainment business anyway. For us, this was a way of gathering up all of our creative assets, at least in terms of development and production, putting them under one roof, and with the acquisition of Nerd Corps Entertainment last year, putting Ace Fipke and Ken Faier at the helm.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong>\u00a0What does DHX Studios have coming down the pike in animation, live-action and interactive content?
\nDENURE:\u00a0<\/strong>There are some great animated projects in the works right now such as\u00a0Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs: The Series<\/em>, which we partnered with Sony on;\u00a0Supernoobs<\/em>, a new series from Scott Fellows that recently came out; and ongoing we have\u00a0Inspector Gadget<\/em>, which we\u2019re continuing production on. We are working with great partners, including Hasbro. We are doing some work with DreamWorks and, more recently, we announced an extension of our partnership with Mattel.<\/p>\n

In terms of the balance between live action and animation, it changes from year to year. We don\u2019t come into it with a prescription about how much of either we should be doing. Having said that, we have been very busy over the past year on the live-action side in our own studios with series like the Netflix original\u00a0Degrassi: Next Class<\/em>\u00a0and the Nickelodeon hit\u00a0Make It Pop<\/em>, which was created by Tom Lynch. We\u2019re in continuing production in the U.K. with Darrall Macqueen, and are just finishing up with the\u00a0Hank Zipzer\u00a0<\/em>series that we produce with Kindle Entertainment and Walker Productions. We\u2019ve completed principal photography on\u00a0Airmageddon<\/em>\u00a0from producer Steve Carsey, who is the creator of\u00a0Robot Wars<\/em>. CBBC is our partner.<\/p>\n

There has been a wide variety of content that we\u2019ve created on the interactive side. We have studios in Vancouver and Halifax that continue to create content around projects like\u00a0Slugterra\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0Inspector Gadget<\/em>. There is an ongoing stream of things that are created for projects like\u00a0Degrassi<\/em>\u00a0that link into the social media side.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:\u00a0<\/strong>How are you balancing the growth of the DHX Distribution catalogue against being able to nurture individual IP?
\nDENURE:<\/strong>\u00a0The catalogue has grown both organically, with shows that we make, and through the acquisition of libraries. For us, the number of original shows that we\u2019re adding to the catalogue every year is somewhere between 8 and 12 series. What we\u2019ve tried to do is manage those additions in such a way that they don\u2019t overlap; we don\u2019t want to compete with ourselves when it comes to new offerings in the marketplace.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:<\/strong>\u00a0How has the DHX Television bouquet been performing since the Family rebranding?
\nDENURE:\u00a0<\/strong>It\u2019s still really early days. The relaunch was in January. So we\u2019re watching the numbers carefully. There have been some good wins and we\u2019ve got some great shows on the channels.<\/p>\n

At Family Channel, we\u2019ve been trying to age the audience up in the evening after 9 p.m. We have programmed\u00a0Degrassi: Next Class\u00a0<\/em>later in the evening; that is a well-known and well-loved show in Canada and we\u2019re seeing pretty good numbers on that.<\/p>\n

For us, it\u2019s a matter of paying attention and being nimble with our programming strategy. There are a lot of changes coming all at once, particularly in the Canadian market. We\u2019re not only going to slightly older age cohorts in later prime-time hours but there\u2019s also a changing environment here with pick-and-pay [partial unbundling of cable packages] being implemented later this year. The whole industry is standing by to see how things unfold.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:\u00a0<\/strong>What are some of the latest initiatives from DHX Brands?
\nDENURE:\u00a0<\/strong>DHX Brands is focused on a small portfolio of properties.\u00a0Teletubbies\u00a0<\/em>is at the top of the list.\u00a0In the Night Garden\u00a0<\/em>has been doing very well for us. We have a key new project that we\u2019ve been working on with Anne Wood and Ragdoll called\u00a0Twirlywoos<\/em>. Older-skewing properties include\u00a0Make It Pop<\/em>, which has some interesting brand opportunities. There are [extensions] for\u00a0Slugterra<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0Caillou<\/em>, which is a perennial favorite. The focus right now is on the rollout of\u00a0Teletubbies\u00a0<\/em>internationally and\u00a0Twirlywoos\u00a0<\/em>as a key priority.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:\u00a0<\/strong>What are the benefits that come with having the size and scale that DHX has achieved?
\nDENURE:<\/strong>\u00a0We have worked a long time to get this level of scale. DHX will be ten years old this year and Decode Entertainment, which I co-founded, would have been 20. We\u2019ve been on this track for many, many years and have believed that having scale and size does matter.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to make sure that we have all parts of the organization working together and that we think very carefully about other things that we add, whether it\u2019s production capacity, individual titles or additional libraries. The key [idea] for us is to be able to play across a number of different parts of the business and to make those parts all work together.<\/p>\n

TV KIDS:\u00a0<\/strong>What are the key initiatives you\u2019ll be spending time on over the next year for DHX\u2019s business as a whole?
\nDENURE:\u00a0<\/strong>One of the priorities is our expansion into Asia, particularly China. We have spent a lot of time on that and have a big agenda there.\u00a0Teletubbies\u00a0<\/em>was actually the first Western preschool show to air on CCTV in China.<\/p>\n

We also want to expand our consumer-products business. A real priority for me is to try to make sure we have all parts of the company working together where it makes sense. We\u2019ve got great, smart people in each one of our businesses: Peter Byrne, who\u2019s responsible for DHX Brands; Josh Scherba, with whom I have been working for around 14 years; and likewise at DHX Television and DHX Studios. We have a very experienced, smart management team here; it\u2019s one thing to build an integrated platform, but our focus is on making all of these parts work in concert.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The company’s president and COO talks about the latest activities across its four main divisions: DHX Studios, DHX Distribution, DHX Television and DHX Brands.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":350,"featured_media":10035,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,21],"tags":[178,1208],"class_list":["post-10034","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-interviews","category-top-stories","tag-dhx-media","tag-steven-denure","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nDHX Media\u2019s Steven DeNure - TVKIDS<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/dhx-medias-steven-denure\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"DHX Media\u2019s Steven DeNure - 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