Kids' TV Tie-Ins
Go Beyond Bob 'n Barney
FROM PUBLISHING
TRENDS (SEPTEMBER 2002)
Now
that we’ve all got our Bob the Builder lunch
boxes stuffed with Bob’s licensed fruit snacks, die-cast
play tools, and special-edition Playdoh, it may
come as no surprise that this beloved British handyman
is now broadcast in 140 countries. Or that Sears
has set up Bob boutiques in 850 stores across the
US. Or that in Britain Bob’s thumbs-up theme song, “Can
We Fix It? Yes, We Can,” became the nation’s hottest
tune since “Candle in the Wind.” Indeed, in a little
over a year, 8.5 million Bob the Builder books
have gone home to kids’ toolboxes everywhere, says Linda
Dowdy, General Manager of Publishing for the Americas
at Hit Entertainment, the production juggernaut
behind the hard-hatted heart-throb.
The undeniable success of children’s television properties
such as Bob and dinosaur-adversary Barney tends
to overshadow an important distinction between not-for-profit,
subsidized public television properties and the equally
successful and as highly praised shows produced by the
very commercial Nickelodeon network. In a word,
it’s money. “We have no trouble competing as far as
entertainment value,” says Christopher Cerf,
President of Sirius Thinking and Creative Producer
of Between the Lions, the critically acclaimed
program about reading that will première its third PBS
season on September 16. “But we’re constantly underpublicized.
It’s hard to get the promotional dollars behind a show
like ours to compete with some of the big studios.”
Sirius Thinking’s dilemma is one faced by all children’s
programming that appears on the non-commercial PBS instead
of commercial networks. Acknowledged or not, the pressure
to earn income from licensing looms at the outset, and
may influence actions taken by the licensors, including
rushing to market before the audience has a chance to
build.
Positioned as the next step after Sesame Street and
aimed at kids aged 4 to 7, Between the Lions chronicles
a leonine family as they delve into the world of books
and teach reading skills with a mix of puppetry, animation,
and live action. There’s also a heady dose of celebrity
appearances (Larry King, Melissa Etheridge,
and Sigourney Weaver all pop in for a visit this
season), but the focus is on curriculum-based reading
instruction. “The important thing about our show is
that it has a scientific, research-based reading curriculum,”
Cerf explains. “We try to teach reading systematically
in the course of entertainment. We think that will be
the key to our licensing as we go forward. As parents
realize that this is a project that can help their kids
to read, we expect they’ll be very loyal to it.”
Betsy
Groban, Managing Director of WGBH Enterprises
(WGBH co-produces the series with Sirius Thinking),
says that Golden Books has the show’s book license,
but following Random’s takeover of Golden, “Between
the Lions got lost in the shuffle. We would love
to form an alliance with another trade publisher.” Others
familiar with the situation point out that the Lions’
educational bent didn’t work with Golden’s mass-merch
focus. And even more than most books, licensed products
have to find their niche quickly or be dropped. “From
a sales and marketing perspective,” adds Golden’s Associate
Publisher, Amy Jarashow, “we launched a relatively
large program for a show which had little consumer awareness
upon the books’ initial publication.” Moving forward,
a textbook line is under way with Pearson Education,
which is developing a “Knowledge Box” that lets teachers
call up any part of the show in class. Interest has
been so strong that “we’re using the school popularity
to work back into the consumer market,” Cerf says. All
in all, 5.5 million viewers watch the program each week,
31% of them adults.
Of
course, there are other worthy shows out there in the
world of public broadcasting. Karen Gruenberg,
Executive VP of Content and Operations for the nonprofit
Sesame Workshop, which has publishing arrangements
with Random House and Reader’s Digest, among
others, reports that the group is launching a book program
with Scholastic for its newest PBS series, Sagwa
— “The Chinese Siamese Cat” — based on a children’s
title originally written by Amy Tan and illustrated
by Gretchen Schields. The project will launch
with two storybooks this fall, and four titles are set
for the spring, according to Sesame Publishing Director
Valerie Garfield. The group’s Dragon Tales
property is launching a book series with Random,
and there’s Sesame Street, of course. Titles
are all vetted by Sesame’s panel of researchers (who
recently gathered kids’ post-Sept. 11 responses via
journals, videos, and scrap books). “It’s a much different
take on licensed publishing,” says Garfield.
The
Big Consumer Splash
Not
that publishers are complaining about Bob and company.
Simon & Schuster has sold 4.2 million Bob
the Builder books, plus a million copies of SpongeBob
Squarepants titles, according to Tracy van Straaten,
Director of Publicity for S&S Children’s Publishing.
When it comes to TV properties, all those book sales
— along with the branded foam furniture and the packaged
underwear — are the lifeblood of a franchise, as the
actual broadcast does not necessarily generate much
in the way of revenue, although it does offer crucial
exposure. “Broadcast supports the brand that drives
the business,” explains Denise Perkins-Landry,
spokeswoman for Hit Entertainment, which acquired Barney
with last year’s purchase of Lyrick Studios.
“There are very few preschool properties that survive
without broadcast.” But without the advertising income
and vast exposure that benefits commercial properties,
public-television productions exist only as long as
the producers can afford to tape the next season, which
is often financed by grants or underwriting. For example,
Between the Lions is supported in part by the
US Department of Education, the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting, and Cheerios.
To help make that all-important consumer splash, Cerf
says that a licensing partner’s promotional plans can
carry just as much weight as the up-front money (all
of which, the producers stress, goes right back into
the show’s production). And take note: a Spanish-language
version of Between the Lions is on tap, in addition
to a show using roots music to help preschoolers become
more musical, plus a new science series. Such reader-friendly
fare may never conquer Bob and Barney. But you never
know. Between the Lions was the first TV show
in a decade to win an endorsement from the National
Education Association, and one study conducted in
Kansas found that kids who watched the program performed
better on almost all outcome measures of reading achievement.
“In the long run,” Cerf says, “it’s a better business
than a hit-driven business. The real issue is building
a brand that stands for reading.”
©2002
Publishing Trends
