{"id":18735,"date":"2020-06-19T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-19T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/worldscreen.com\/"},"modified":"2021-06-24T16:10:21","modified_gmt":"2021-06-24T20:10:21","slug":"looking-for-laughs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/","title":{"rendered":"Looking for Laughs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Character-driven comedy elevates kids\u2019 content across all genres for all markets and all ages. <\/em><\/p>\n

Television titles aimed at kids\u2014whether they are about superheroes or heroes from the pages of history\u2014need comedy. And kids\u2019 comedy\u2014whether it be slapstick or situational, if it wants to travel across continents or your living room\u2014needs character at its heart to drive it home.<\/p>\n

Comedy is not only the best-selling and best-performing genre in the kids\u2019 content arena, according to leading industry execs, it\u2019s also the key ingredient across all other genres of programming aimed at kids, peppering everything from action and adventure series to the programs that seek to educate its young audience. The universality of wanting to be entertained and wanting to laugh is as true\u2014if not more true\u2014for kids as it is for their elders. Comedy\u2019s ability to engage and connect is all the more amplified by carefully constructed characters to support it.<\/p>\n

\u201cComedy is the essential component for most genres,\u201d says Dominic Gardiner, CEO of Jetpack Distribution. \u201cEven if a series isn\u2019t supposed to be funny, it\u2019s good to have comedy in it. Preschool, education, adventure, everything has comedy in it. If you\u2019re trying to get kids to pay attention, then comedy is the best way to hold their eyes. Comedy is like the currency of kids; the way kids behave with each other. They\u2019re always laughing, they\u2019re always making jokes or doing silly things, so that\u2019s what the content needs to do in order to engage with kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vince Commisso, president and CEO of 9 Story Media Group, concurs with Gardiner that comedy is essential. \u201cI don\u2019t think you can make any kind of kids\u2019 content these days without there being a comedic element to it,\u201d he says. \u201cKids always want to be entertained with a smile, with a giggle. You can engage them through some other ethos\u2014creativity, friendship, family, empathy\u2014but if there\u2019s not a comedic element to it, you won\u2019t succeed.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a frequent supplier and partner of PBS Kids, 9 Story has ample experience infusing comedy into content that aims to have kids learn while they\u2019re laughing. Those shows \u201calways have an educational component, but they [also] always have entertainment at the forefront,\u201d says Commisso. \u201cI think you have to actually lead with the entertainment and with the comedy and then deliver the education in that construct because that\u2019s what sticks.\u201d<\/p>\n

At Guru Studio, \u201cwe\u2019re always focused on character-driven stories,\u201d says Jonathan Abraham, VP of sales and business development. \u201cComedy has to come from characters being put in situations where their personalities can come through.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom van Waveren, CEO and creative director at CAKE\u2014which recently secured a global deal for a series based on the Lucas the Spider<\/em> YouTube shorts\u2014also sees characters and the comedy that spools out and around them as the true pulse of shows that want to help kids learn. \u201cYou put the characters at the center of the storytelling and wrap the educational around it, rather than making a show about the education and trying to wrap a character story around it,\u201d he advises.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a given that comedy can be a portal to learning, providing kids an education on all matter of topics and subjects without them feeling like they\u2019re back in the classroom. Curriculum-based comedy, so to speak, is part of a larger pattern in demand that sees broadcasters and SVODs being more interested in genre shows with<\/em> comedy than shows with comedy as the sum total of their parts.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has moved to action-comedy, adventure-comedy, while before it was just pure comedy; it\u2019s segmenting into genres,\u201d says Pierre Sissmann, chairman and CEO of Cyber Group Studios, who believes that comedy can help kids absorb more important topics, including family values and dynamics.<\/p>\n

Finding the right sort of comedy to inject into a series, however, can be difficult. According to those making and distributing these series, creating quality comedy comes with unique challenges that many companies struggle to meet\u2014a reason for the ongoing demand for such shows.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s always a lack of comedy because it\u2019s hard to make good comedy,\u201d as van Waveren succinctly puts it. \u201cIt\u2019s a hard genre to get right. There\u2019s not a diminished appetite for it; I think it\u2019s as good a time as ever to do a good comedy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Josh Selig, CEO of Little Airplane Productions, which is developing the new comedy Doctor Space<\/em> with Studio 100 Media and Fantawild Animation, was similarly blunt. \u201cThere\u2019s always a big demand for good comedies for one simple reason: the supply is always so limited,\u201d he says. \u201cGood comedy is very hard to make, especially in animation.\u201d Having a funny showrunner on board overseeing every step of the process is Selig\u2019s advice to beat the odds of a comedy bust. But otherwise? \u201cCompanies should stay away from comedies unless they are great at making comedies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Slapstick has been around since the silent era. And modern non-dialogue programs aimed at preschoolers continue that tradition. The appeal of creative but ultimately innocuous injury endures. Though depending on who you ask, slapstick\u2019s ability to resonate is up for debate and contingent on all kinds of factors\u2014from age to country to the vehicle of that comedy. Mr. Bean<\/em>, for instance, referenced by two execs surveyed for this feature, resonates because of the titular character. \u201cMr. Bean <\/em>is a great example of how physical humor can work really well,\u201d says CAKE\u2019s van Waveren. \u201cBecause ultimately it informs the character.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cyber Group\u2019s Sissmann has observed a rise in slapstick\u2019s popularity in recent years, a trend that has benefited the company\u2019s hit show Taffy<\/em>. In the vein of Tom and Jerry<\/em>, the series centers on a raccoon who invades a dog\u2019s rich domestic life by disguising itself as a cat. \u201cSlapstick humor has always worked,\u201d says Sissmann. \u201cThere have been ups and downs, but I think that today it works much better than it did ten to 15 years ago. Maybe because times are more serious and there are more issues around the world and people need to laugh more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, in order to achieve good slapstick, there\u2019s that pesky need for a character worth investing in to support it, to make people care. \u201cYou can\u2019t just have an anvil fall from the sky; you have to have it set up by character,\u201d says Commisso of 9 Story. The characters become even more vital to the success of a series and its comedy beats when the target audience is older. The comedy then \u201ccomes from interactions between the characters,\u201d says Commisso, and the characters \u201cdo things that are unexpected or say things that are unexpected.\u201d When the audience gets a little bit older still, \u201cthe comedy gets to be kind of wise-cracky.\u201d<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re looking at comedy that can do as well in Asia as in Europe as in North America and so on, slapstick would seem to have fewer barriers to entry. And it can and does travel well. \u201cThe pie in the face, regardless of what part of the planet you\u2019re from, that\u2019s a funny gag,\u201d says Jetpack\u2019s Gardiner. \u201cYou don\u2019t need to explain that or translate that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Guru\u2019s Abraham echoes the point. \u201cSlapstick comedy is obviously going to travel internationally the easiest,\u201d he says. \u201cThe biggest challenge when it comes to comedy traveling around the world is having to dub the show into local languages. Sometimes the context of the jokes is lost, or the way the words are positioned will directly impact the delivery and the comedy is entirely missed.\u201d<\/p>\n

While J\u00e9r\u00f4me Alby, managing director at Mediatoon Distribution, joins the consensus in pointing to slapstick\u2019s ease of entry to markets the world over, he also finds that programs can travel on the coattails of known characters\u2014like Garfield, for instance. \u201cGarfield is a global character; for people in America, it\u2019s American, for the Chinese, it\u2019s almost Chinese,\u201d he says. \u201cTypically, the best shows are the ones that have global reach, and that people in every country think that it\u2019s local, that it\u2019s theirs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Odd couple comedy duos also have broad appeal, according to Alby. \u201cIt\u2019s a global and universal thing. You can be somewhere in a small tribe of Amazonia as well as a village in Germany and everyone laughs at it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Character-driven comedy elevates kids\u2019 content across all genres for all markets and all ages.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1033,"featured_media":18736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[79,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-features","category-top-stories","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nLooking for Laughs - 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\/looking-for-laughs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Looking for Laughs - TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Character-driven comedy elevates kids\u2019 content across all genres for all markets and all ages.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2020-06-19T13:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-06-24T20:10:21+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2017\/07\/Bobby-and-Bill.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"338\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Chelsea Regan\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Chelsea Regan\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"7 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/\",\"name\":\"Looking for Laughs - TVKIDS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2020-06-19T13:00:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-06-24T20:10:21+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/2a2c6d8fb3c7c8b4220b8877ecffb79a\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/looking-for-laughs\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Looking for Laughs\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\",\"name\":\"TVKIDS\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/2a2c6d8fb3c7c8b4220b8877ecffb79a\",\"name\":\"Chelsea Regan\",\"description\":\"Chelsea Regan is the managing editor of World Screen. 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