{"id":20834,"date":"2021-06-09T08:33:27","date_gmt":"2021-06-09T12:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dev2.worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/"},"modified":"2021-06-09T12:19:00","modified_gmt":"2021-06-09T16:19:00","slug":"anatomy-of-a-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/","title":{"rendered":"Anatomy of a Hit"},"content":{"rendered":"

Fresh TV\u2019s Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch and CAKE\u2019s Ed Galton discussed how the Total Drama <\/em>franchise has evolved and maintained its hit status in the kids\u2019 market at the TV Kids Summer Festival.<\/p>\n

Produced by Fresh TV and sold by CAKE, the franchise has spawned several series, with two new seasons in the works for HBO Max and Cartoon Network.<\/p>\n

Read excerpts of the session below and watch the entire video here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Total Drama Island<\/em> originated as Fresh TV was conducting research for its show 6teen<\/em>. Pertsch, VP of creative affairs and executive producer at the outfit, noted, \u201cOne of the questions we asked a lot of teens and tweens was, What are your favorite shows? And all of them mentioned reality TV shows. They were super savvy about them and loved watching them. This was at the dawn of reality television. We thought, Why don\u2019t we make a really awesome animated parody and make it for tweens? The idea of an animated reality show is ridiculous from the start! Because we wrote such rich characters and gave them real arcs, the kids not only embraced it as a parody of the reality shows they knew, but they got super invested in it.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGillis, president and executive producer at Fresh TV, added, \u201cWe found that not only were we able to parody the archest characters you\u2019d find in reality, we were also able to put them into the most ridiculous, exaggerated challenges that audiences responded to.\u201d<\/p>\n

CAKE came on board early to serve as the worldwide distributor. \u201cWhen we first rolled out the series, it was met with some resistance,\u201d said Galton, CEO. \u201cThere were reservations. No one had ever seen a show like this before, which is what\u2019s made it so unique and why it\u2019s sold so well. The first sale we did was to Canal+ in France. They saw something in the show that others didn\u2019t. Cartoon Network EMEA then came on board, and then Cartoon Network U.S. Those were the three big deals we did back to back. It wasn\u2019t really until Cartoon Network U.S. picked it up that the series blew up. The ratings on season one on Cartoon Network were astronomical. The finale of season one was the highest-rated episode on air for any show in the past ten years. That\u2019s what gave the series global legitimacy, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, McGillis credited the role that Cartoon Network\u2019s Adina Pitt (now VP\/lead of content acquisitions, partnerships and co-pros for the Americas at WarnerMedia Kids & Family) played in making the show a hit. \u201cAdina just swooped in, courageously taking a show that broke a lot of rules, particularly the serialized aspect of it. The dominos started to fall as soon as she took that risk. We\u2019re eternally thankful to Adina and the team for doing that so early in the game.\u201d<\/p>\n

To deliver the comedic alchemy that drives the show, the Fresh TV team taps into many different sources. \u201cTom and I gobble up all the teen media out there,\u201d Pertsch said. \u201cI have a preteen, a tween and a teen in my house, so I have a great focus group. They walk by rough designs on the wall in my office and say, Oh no, she can\u2019t have those shoes! The writing rooms are hilarious. We have 10 or 12 of the funniest people we can find. And we push ourselves to come up with the biggest jokes, the most dramatic storylines and the silliest, funniest, biggest challenges. We go down a lot of rabbit holes! I\u2019ve learned a lot of gross things in these rooms!\u201d<\/p>\n

The franchise has had several different iterations, some more successful than others. \u201cWhat we learned was, the further we got from a straight parody of the kind of shows that our audience is currently watching around the world, the less it resonated,\u201d McGillis said. \u201cAs we go back this season, we\u2019re going to the season one model. It\u2019s generating the most compelling stories and the funniest laughs.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sales worldwide \u201chave been fantastic,\u201d Galton said. \u201cWe\u2019ve produced 143 episodes and two specials on the original Total Drama<\/em> franchise, and Total Dramarama<\/em> has produced another 78 half hours of content after season three is completed. There\u2019s a ferocious appetite around the world for this content that keeps on selling. There have been instances where we\u2019ve done multiple deals over the 14 years we\u2019ve been selling it to the same broadcaster, renewal after renewal. We\u2019ve worked with both linear partners and with streamers. The Total Drama<\/em> franchise has been on Cartoon Network in the U.S., but it\u2019s also been on Netflix in the U.S. It\u2019s worked really well on both platforms. It sits on Virgin Media, but it also plays on Pop Kids in the U.K. It\u2019s on Canal+ in France and ABC Australia. What\u2019s unique about this show is it works for public-service broadcasters, premium pay-TV service channels and digital platforms; it\u2019s phenomenal. It is far and away the most successful series we\u2019ve had the pleasure of selling over all these years.\u201d<\/p>\n

On how the new season will be different from the original, McGillis noted: \u201cThere are two things we are changing up ever so slightly. The first big change is leaning into diversity. We feel that not only is this a moment we can celebrate diversity, but this is the show that celebrates diversity. We have a LatinX character, we have several Black characters, East Asian, South Asian, an amputee, two LGBTQ characters\u2014who will have a relationship because our audience loves to ship! And to back that up, we have a writer who represents each of those cultural perspectives and is a young, fresh, funny voice. That\u2019s five new writers in our room who are infusing all kinds of new humor and new energy into the show. That\u2019s a big change for us and one that we found is only making the show better.\u201d<\/p>\n

The relationship between CAKE and Fresh TV has contributed to the success of the show globally, Galton noted. \u201cIt\u2019s a very collaborative process. It\u2019s not just, here\u2019s a finished show, go out and sell it. We talk things through and figure out the best path forward for the series and the franchise. It\u2019s a 14-year relationship. We know each other well, we speak often. At this point, it\u2019s like shorthand in the way we work together now.\u201d<\/p>\n

McGillis added, \u201cIt speaks to what a distributor-producer relationship can be because there\u2019s such a level of mutual trust and respect. We know that when Ed and his team come to us with market intel, for instance, that\u2019s not to be taken lightly. They have incredible reach, so that\u2019s important for us to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

As kids and families emerge from the pandemic, comedy is more important than ever, McGillis added. \u201cWe need to laugh our way through this. We do feel there\u2019s a little bit of a humor deficit out there!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAge appropriate, silly, funny, getting out of your own head is magical, it\u2019s the medicine they need,\u201d Pertsch added.<\/p>\n

The companies are working together on Lucas the Spider<\/em>. \u201cIt is fiercely, passionately good-natured, and funny and kind,\u201d McGillis said. \u201cIt feels like exactly what everyone needs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fresh TV\u2019s Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch and CAKE\u2019s Ed Galton discussed how the Total Drama franchise has evolved and maintained its hit status in the kids\u2019 market at the TV Kids Summer Festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":290,"featured_media":20835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[100,4821,474,3554,4070,6048,5973],"class_list":["post-20834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-top-stories","tag-cake","tag-ed-galton","tag-fresh-tv","tag-jennifer-pertsch","tag-tom-mcgillis","tag-total-drama-island","tag-tv-kids-summer-festival","pmpro-has-access"],"yoast_head":"\nAnatomy of a Hit - 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\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Anatomy of a Hit - TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Fresh TV\u2019s Tom McGillis and Jennifer Pertsch and CAKE\u2019s Ed Galton discussed how the Total Drama franchise has evolved and maintained its hit status in the kids\u2019 market at the TV Kids Summer Festival.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"TVKIDS\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-06-09T12:33:27+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-06-09T16:19:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2017\/07\/TotalDrama-KidsFest-621.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"319\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Mansha Daswani\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/\",\"name\":\"Anatomy of a Hit - TVKIDS\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2021-06-09T12:33:27+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-06-09T16:19:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/#\/schema\/person\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/anatomy-of-a-hit\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/worldscreen.com\/tvkids\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Anatomy of a Hit\"}]},{\"@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\/83da304c8bad8bfdb3edd7eb47cfe5ad\",\"name\":\"Mansha Daswani\",\"description\":\"Mansha Daswani is the editor-in-chief and associate publisher of World Screen. 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