Go Figure

Picture Box Distribution, a Canadian-based distributor of kid's programming, picks up the sales rights to Go Figure (52x1), a new preschool 2D animated short-form series that is currently in development. Produced by Colombia-based 4direcciones, Go Figure is based on a Latin American board book series, which helps preschoolers work on their concentration and analytic skills. Under the deal Picture Box takes all media rights for the property outside of Latin America, and will be seeking to ink TV deals, as well as digital media partners.

CBeebies, Darrall Macqueen, JimJam

CBeebies commissions indie UK-based producer Darrall Macqueen to produce the new mixed live-action/2D photo animation, preschool series Magic Baby (26x11).

Magic Baby follows the enchanting adventures of Baby Jake, the youngest of 10 kids that live in a windmill. Jake's 6-year-old brother, Isaac, narrates the series and interprets Baby Jake's giggles and gurgles and takes viewers into an imaginary world with Jake and his animal friends.

Baby Jake is a Darrall Macqueen production in association with Ireland's JAM Media, which will be produced by Maddy Darrall and executive produced by Billy Macqueen of Darrall Macqueen and Sarah Colclough for CBeebies. JAM Media's Alan Shannon will serve as animation director.


Chello Zone's international preschool channel, JimJam, expands with new deals in the Netherlands and Portugal. JimJam has just launched on KPN (Netherlands) as part of the broadcasters new digital kid-targeted package.

KPN also picks up JimJam's non-commercial VOD service. In Portugal JimJam launches this week on Vodafone's IPTV service as part of its basic package.

JimJam is already carried in the Netherlands on CAIW Media, UPC Nederland, Canal Digitaal, CAI Harderwijk, Delta Kabelcomfort and Ziggo. The preschool channel is also carried by Glashart Media. In Portugal, JimJam is currently available via Cabovisao, Optimus Clix and Portugal Telecom (Meo).

Wildbrain Entertainment

The US Department of Education awards WTTW, Chicago's public TV station, in partnership with Wildbrain Entertainment and The Michael Cohen Group, a $32.5 million grant as part of its five-year Ready to Learn initiative, to develop the multimedia property UMIGO (you make it go).

Ready to Learn supports development of preschool/early elementary school aimed educational programming and media. WTTW and Wildbrain Entertainment (Yo Gabba Gabba!) are teaming up to develop UMIGO, which will debut first as an online property and then as a TV series, followed by a consumer products line.

Created by Michael Polis, President, Wildbrain Entertainment, UMIGO will also be developed in collaboration with research/evaluation company The Michael Cohen Group.

Designed specifically for at-risk kids in the US living in low-income households, the online interactive UMIGO site will feature kid-initiative learning and play options for K2-8 to support the learning of basic principles of math, as well as develop their ability to think creatively and work collaboratively.

Scholastic and Sesame Workshop

Scholastic celebrates its 90th anniversary with the launch of the global literacy campaign, Read Every Day. Lead a Better Life. ( www.scholastic.com/readeveryday ), which aims to increase literacy in the 21st century and underlines to kids the importance of reading has in their success in life.

The campaign will also target parents and teachers to help make reading easier, more fun and more accessible to kids at school and home. More than 120 organizations and individuals have joined the campaign as literacy champions. The Read Every Day initiative is comprised of several elements, including:

The Reading Bill of Rights the Bill of Rights is available on the website and will also be handed out at noted sites around the world on October 22, Scholastic's official anniversary.


Reading Action Steps, ways we can all encourage and help kids read
Celebrities, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Whoopi Goldberg, Kathy Bates, Keke Palmer, and the NFL's Justin Tick, will support Read Every Day through public service announcements, while noted kid's illustrators, including David Shannon, Mark Teague, Norman Bridwell, and Barbara McClintock, have created special posters for the campaign

Scholastic has also created the social network site You Are What You Read (
www.youarewhatyouread.com), for readers worldwide where people can post the five books that changed their lives and connect with others through shared "Bookprints," and discover new books.

The site also features "Bookprints" of noted people such as Bill Gates, Eva Mendes, Tony Hawk, Jodi Picoult, Dr. Sanjay Gupta and Malcolm Gladwell. The site launches October 22.
Taylor Swift will participate in a live webcast exclusively for schools to celebrate Read Every Day.

Read Now! with Taylor Swift will include an interview with the artist about how reading is part of her life and she will perform. Hosted by Nick Cannon, the event will take place October 27, 2010. Teachers can get more information and register at scholastic.com/readeveryday

Sesame Workshop names Dr. Charlotte Frances Cole as SVP/Global Education.

She will be responsible for Sesame Workshop's worldwide strategies and lead the development of curriculum and research around its international projects. Dr. Cole has worked with Sesame Workshop as part of its Education, Research and Outreach team since 1994.

CPB, PBS and new shows

The new mixed live-action and CGI animated series Mia and me (26x24) debuted last week at MipJunior, becoming the top screened show.

Featuring a look based on the art of painter Gustav Klimt, Mia and me is a co-production of Lucky Punch (a joint venture between m4e and Gerhard Hahn), Rainbow and March Entertainment. Also serving as co-producers on the series are m4e, Hahn Film, ZDF (Germany) and Rai Fiction (Italy).

Telescreen, a unit of m4e, and Rainbow, expect to announce TV, home entertainment and product licensing deals, as well as a toy deal, soon for Mia and Me. Mia and me is expected to premiere at the end of 2011 on ZDF and Rai.

Entertainment industry veterans Pam Slavin, Toni Stevens and Bill Fox have set up the new family entertainment company, Wizard Hat Productions.

Based in Toronto Canada, Wizard Hat Productions plans to create and produce live action and animated series for kids and family audiences.

The partners each have solid entertainment backgrounds: Slavin has written and produced on a range of kid-targeted series including Little Bear, Johnny Test, Rolie Polie Olie and Berenstain Bears; Stevens has produced kids show including Caillou, Arthur, Gerald McBoing Boing, Storytime with Thomas the Tank engine and Will & Dewitt; and Fox served as EVP/Communications and Corporate Development, BCE, and prior to that as SVP/Public Affairs, Bombardier.

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) and PBS have been awarded a Ready To Learn grant of close to $72 million by the US Department of Education's Office of Innovation and Improvement to fund multiplatform content efforts to improve math and literacy skills of K2-8.

The grant, which is part of $15 million in funds that will be handed out to organizations between 2010-2015, enables CPB and PBS to further their multiplatform math and literacy educational efforts with a range of partners, including local PBS stations, and existing and new PBS Kids producers, including Sesame Workshop, WGBH, Universal, The Jim Henson Company, Out of the Blue, TPT National Productions, Kratt Brothers, Cloud Kid, Portfolio Entertainment Inc., and Random House Children's Entertainment.

Other partners include the School of Education at Boston University, the Chicago Public Schools' Virtual Pre-K and Virtual K programs, the National Summer Learning Association, Creative Commons and the Collaborative for Building After-School Systems.

Education Development Center, SRI International and WestEd will conduct research and evaluations to help support the CPB and PBS initiative. This is the CPB and PBS' fourth Ready To Learn grant since 1995.

Kids, Tweens and Teens

by Daisy Whitney

Do the math - TV is still the big kahuna when it comes to kids.

For all the talk of growing up digital, kids, tweens and teens still gravitate to the TV for the bulk of their media consumption.

However, that doesn't mean digital avenues should be neglected when marketing to the younger groups -- either products on TV or TV networks themselves.

"No matter how you slice it, people of every age group are watching more TV than ever before and the time for all the internet and digital apps isn't coming from TV -- it's coming from print, radio, other things," said Jack Wakshlag, Chief Research Officer at Turner.

In fact, in the first quarter of 2010 kids 2-11 watched 24 hours of TV each week, compared to four minutes of internet video. Teens watched about 23 hours of TV per week, compared to 10 minutes of online video, Nielsen said.

Those numbers suggest that even though online video is incredibly popular -- at billions of views a month the numbers bear that out -- it's still just a fraction of overall entertainment consumption. So while the younger generation is infinitely more digital than the kids of yesterday, they still are devoting the lion's share of their attention to TV.

Plus, the kids market has always been one of the best targeted areas in TV, simply by virtue of the existence of cable networks for kids like Nickelodeon, Cartoon and Disney, said Donna Speciale, President of Investment, Activation and Agency Operations at MediaVest. "Kids used to always be on broadcast networks on Saturday and Sunday programming. Between Nickelodeon and then Cartoon Network and Disney, they started these very niche networks completely targeted to kids. The kids landscape has done the best job for years honing in on a specific target with a specific network," she said. Networks are also catering to smaller niches of kids, such as Nick Jr. geared to kids in preschool. "They'll segment their programming so it's even more targeted and this helps brands," she said.

However, marketers would be remiss to return to the days of old and just plunk all their ad money on the tube.

That's because teens especially spend a lot of time researching products and services on the internet-- goods that they are likely to hear about from friends and from TV ads. About 34 million teens aged 12 to 19 have $176 bullion in personal purchasing power, eMarketer reported, citing statistics from youth market research firm TRU. While they often spend that money in actual stores, they are doing their due diligence about the products and services online.

That's why there should be a natural throughline between TV and the digital venues where teens are making the purchasing decisions. Social media, cell phones and online connectedness to friends plays a major role in teens' buying decisions when they are finally ready to make a purchase. A teen girl, for instance, is more likely to buy products in stores than online compared to other internet users. But she has likely used social media to glean product tips and purchase advise from friends before she pulls the trigger, eMarketer said. A Piper Jaffray survey ranked friends, TV and the internet as the most influential factors in teens' clothing purchase decisions, for instance.

So while the numbers for TV will dwarf digital figures, the digital component of any media campaign for kids or teens plays a vital role in adding connection and authenticity, said Evan Gerber, Director of Experience Design at media agency Isobar. "If you are an advertiser running a campaign on TV, where is it sending them, how consistent is the messaging from one thing to the other, and are you giving them a conversation and a story to be involved with?"

The TV message is the megaphone, but driving to a web site or online experience for information, sharing and learning is critical to marketing to this demo. "That's where you get the legs for a campaign -- online," Gerber said.

Networks too have to think about kids holistically when they're marketing shows to young viewers. Cartoon Network, as an example, invests a lot of marketing resources in gaming because kids 6-11 are heavy online gamers. "Whether addictinggames.com or platforms like that, our approach is to bring gaming to those environments by syndicating games and then promoting tune-in," said Vicky Free, VP of 360 marketing for Turner Broadcasting's Animation for young adults and kids. "We give them something they like first before hitting them with the tune-in message."

Social networking too is becoming more important for marketing and that means creating games and other viral content for kids to share. "They want to buzz about it, rate it, tell us about, so we try to give them videos to share on Facebook or tell their friends about to help promote tune-in," she said. "They are consuming media in all platforms so we need to be in all those mediums to drive the kind of scale and awareness that is required for tune in."

That's because TV is still the epicenter for kids.

"Miley Cyrus is a superstar to this demo, and it's not because of the runaway success of HannahMontana.com," said Donald Seaman, VP and director of communication analysis at media agency MPG. "Her fame and status are because she has a TV show. For all their influence, YouTube, Facebook, mobile apps, Twitter, et al have no ability to create iconic brands they're user tools that allow fans to share their fervor about their favorites. They merely allow the proselytizing to be convenient, immediate, and global. I would offer that we're in as much a Golden Age for kids' television as we ever have been.Indeed, kids are watching just about as much television as ever. It's just that the ever-present content makes the on-air programs just a small part of the bigger packaging of the media product."

Later -- Daisy
Daisy Whitney for Cynopsis Media
10.18.10

WGBH and PBS Kids partner with Annie Leonard

WGBH and PBS Kids partner with Annie Leonard on the new web-based series Loop Scoops (eight short videos), which will launch Monday, October 18 at pbskids.org/loopscoops ( www.pbskids.org/loopscoops ).

Targeted to K6-9/families/educators, Loop Scoop is designed to encourage kids to think about stuff in our lives (e.g. juice boxes, game device, magazines) and ask "Where does it come from? What is it made of? What happens to it when it's thrown away?, and after getting answers to make choices based on what they learn. Loop Scoops builds of the Story of Stuff animated video, written/hosted by Leonard, which illustrates the lifecycle of material items. Educational resources based on the Loop Scoops videos will be available via teachersdomain.org ( www.teachersdomain.org ) in late November.

Loop Scoops comes from the producers of Zoom and Fetch! With Ruff Ruffman. Funding for the Loop Scoops project comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Brought To You By The Letters P, B And S

by Karen Herman , Tuesday, October 12, 2010


Southern Californians were shocked last week when public TV station KCET announced it would not renew its affiliation with PBS. The 46-year-old station will remain noncommercial, but will not run PBS programming. The station argues that its upcoming $7 million dues are too much of a budget strain. After months of negotiation, a deal couldn't be reached.

What does this mean for PBS fans? Come Jan. 1st, you won't find "Sesame Street" in Los Angeles! OK, that's improbable; there are three smaller public TV stations at-the-ready. KCET, if it takes its new job seriously, is in a sink-or-swim position where it must provide programming specific to the needs of Los Angeles' diverse community.

It is without question that other PBS affiliates will be facing similar budget constraints, making the KCET incident a potential precursor to the sea change in distribution methods that lies ahead. For PBS, this multimillion-dollar hit could be a blessing in disguise, forcing the company to more seriously explore alternatives methods to reach their audience -- namely, their lagging digital initiatives. The Internet is, after all, the publishing and broadcasting beacon of free public thought and enterprise.

Like all media entities, public television is in the midst of recreating its identity. Recently, a new mission statement was created by the leadership of Corporation for Public Broadcasting, PBS, National Public Radio, and the Association of Public Television Stations. It touts a vocabulary shift from "public broadcasting" to "public media":

"Public media informs, educates, and inspires by providing content that sustains the civic and cultural life of society. Public media is universally accessible, free from commercial or political pressure, and used by millions of Americans on all platforms including television, radio and on-line.

Going forward, public media - from our local radio and television stations to our national organizations - is building on the hard-earned trust and goodwill of our audience by becoming even more diverse, networked, nimble, innovative, and focused on serving the needs of our changing society.

With the support of the American people, we will continue to evolve as creators, curators and connectors on the local and national level in order to fulfill our mission of informing communities, enriching our culture, and inspiring dialogue."

Of course, in the next paragraph, the consortium backtracks to the importance of broadcast:

"For the foreseeable future, given Public Media's mission to bring service to all of the citizens of the United States, over-the-air broadcasting will remain critical. In fact, millions of households still rely on over-the-air reception to view public television, including many with limited distribution alternatives or limited resources to spend on subscription services.

....Whether received over-the-air or by cable or satellite, in addition to its ubiquitous reach utilizing technology and facilities across the country, broadcasting will continue to be a very cost effective medium for reaching mass audiences.

In fact, the Public Media system could not afford to stream its content to all its viewers and listeners due to the cost of bandwidth. As a result, public media organizations are mixing their distribution capabilities, making smart investments that integrate broadcast, online and mobile platforms in a seamless experience for the American public."

Fair enough. PBS' video portal has improved, but is limited in content and tends to follow, rather than lead, in terms of site-building. Here's an opportunity for PBS and company to engage visionaries (maybe ones that are reinventing television and trying not to "do evil") to integrate a true online PBS portal into TV's next iteration. As a noncommercial venture, it can still use its trademark "brought to you by" funding approach.

With IP addresses, content can be limited to geographic regions devoid of PBS carriers so that independent stations can survive. This online entity then could solicit funding and in-kind donations to bring broadband and emerging technologies carrying this new network into underserved homes. Isn't that really the mission of "public media"?

Face it, kids without digital savvy are already behind. Sure, "Sesame Street" is an amazing teaching tool, but it premiered 41 years ago. Things have changed and "public media" needs to change with it. More and more teens and twentysomethings don't even own TVs, meaning their kids will be nurtured on broadband.

As Joan Ganz Cooney, creator of "Sesame Street," said in her Archive interview, "You wouldn't say let's put in ten minutes of entertainment and ten minutes of education. Every piece of education would be entertaining and every piece of entertainment would be educational." Shouldn't we expect the same today?

Of course this is a very simplistic version. There's an alphabet soup of agencies, affiliates, funders and producers to worry about. But, it's clear that public broadcasters, like their commercial counterparts, have the opportunity and responsibility to innovate.