KidsCo, open for business
Harvey Shore spoke with Paul Robinson, the London-based founder and managing director of global children’s’ pay-TV channel KidsCo, who is visiting Australia for the second time for the ASTRA Conference this week.
Last trip, in November 2009, he raised eyebrows by joining those who accused ABC-TV of bullying producers and competitive channels in its rush to lock up both free-TV and pay-TV rights to programs for its new children’s channel ABC3. Robinson said, “All they’re really doing is using public money to increase the price of acquired programming. It’s outrageous.”
This trip, he’s here to join a panel of powerbrokers at a breakout session during the annual ASTRA Conference. At least that’s the cover story. The hidden agenda (and it’s not that well hidden) is to do a little smooching with Kim Williams and his cronies at Foxtel (who added KidsCo to their line-up last November), and to keep faith with a promise he made on that earlier trip – to develop an Australian co-production within 12-18 months of KidsCo’s November launch.
Robinson (who has 30 years experience in the industry) readily admits he hasn’t yet seen the Australian co-prod he’s looking for, and says finding popular kids’ programs for a global market is a slow and risky business. “In any one year, we may look at 120 program proposals worldwide. We’ll fund perhaps 20 of those to pilot stage. Maybe four will get commissioned for an initial series. Only one or two will become hits and get re-signed.”
“Australia is our 60th territory, and it has a special appeal to KidsCo because my global program director Eileen McCarthy is an Australian. She’s been with me since I founded KidsCo in 2007. She and I are both keen to add home-grown Australian content to KidsCo’s Australian feed. We have a commissioning budget which is 10 percent of our total programming spend; and we’ve already bought in some local productions that have aired earlier on free-TV. For example, Snake Tales – a 13 x half hour live action family comedy starring Kath & Kim’s Peter Rowsthorn and Stupid, Stupid Man’s Leah Vandenberg, which is about a larger than life snake wrangler who dreams of the glory days when he had his own TV spot and visitors flocked to his Outback Snake-Atorium-Orama in the town of Barren Barren; and Misery Guts, an animated 13 x half hour series by Morris Gleitzman. That gives you some idea of the style we’re looking for.
“Our message to Australian producers is that we are keen to screen local programs, we are prepared to get involved in co-pros, we have the budget for it, and I’m keen to talk with as many local producers and creative ideas people as possible while I’m in Australia. KidsCo hasn’t closed any co-pro deals in Australia yet, although we’ve had talks with three local producers. So the field is still wide open.”
“What we’re looking for is something iconic for Australian audiences, which will also work around the world. We are primarily keen on animation, but will look at live action. It must of course be suitable for the six to ten year old audience. And it should have these ingredients: great storytelling, great characters, a competitive price, a duration of 11 to 22 minutes per episode, and ideally 13 episodes or more in the proposed series. Most importantly, it’s got to have real appeal – and real legs, so it lasts for several years. At this stage I haven’t seen a proposal with all those ingredients, so the opportunities for scoring a co-pro with KidsCo are still wide-open.”
Robinson will be in Australia for ten days, so he can meet with as many interested Australian producers as possible. “We tend to be very open and honest with those who want to work with us. We give quick answers, and we’re very friendly and supportive. So I encourage Australians with ideas for exciting new kids’ TV series to get in touch and arrange a meeting. If you’ve got that magic story, we’ve got the opportunity for you to realise it on a world stage!”
Paul Robinson can be contacted at Paul@kidscotv.tv
