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Editorial
Digital—a new (old) hope
You’ve heard it all before. The realities
of the North American licensing
landscape haven’t changed all that
much in the last 10 years, apart from
consumer-spending ups and downs.
In short, most would say there are
too few retailers controlling the
majority of available shelf space,
which is being granted to just a
small group of top-selling licenses.
Mirroring that situation, for kids
TV-driven licenses, is the fact that a
handful of broadcasters control the
fate of much of the programming
currently on the market. So, any
way you slice it, it’s a tough slog for
entertainment licensors not named
Disney, Marvel or Lucasfilm. Don’t
give up hope, however. If you can get
a good concept out there, be it via
YouTube or social media, kids will find
it. Digital content distribution, I think,
is reaching the tipping point as a force
in driving indie licensing programs.
Watch for
the next issue of
July/August 2013
Street Date:
July 26
It’s no secret that kids are watching and playing
whenever and whatever they want, as iOS and
other mobile devices proliferate. More importantly,
they’re engaging with content that didn’t necessarily
require plum placement on one of the “big
three” broadcasters’ schedules or top-billing at
the App Store. For example, see Gary Rusak’s piece
on the meteoric rise of building-oriented video
game Minecraft (p. 38). It’s a hot ticket right now
among licensees, and its entire burgeoning consumer
products program stemmed from demands
made by ardent fans, primarily kids eight to 13, for
product. Creator Mojang’s CEO admits that the
idea for Minecraft’s very first license with Lego came
from the game’s online fan community. If the slowmoving,
seemingly primitive-looking game had
been pitched to licensees and retailers at its outset,
I believe it would have been rejected outright. But
given enough time to grow virally between 2009
and 2011, when Minecraft download numbers
really started to take off, Mojang is now in the enviable
position of turning licensees away.
Similarly, Brazilian preschool property Galinha Pintadinha, which now has more
than 50 licensees and live stage shows in its native territory, was initially turned down
by the country’s kids TV broadcasters (see “Emerging markets, emerging IPs,” p. 52).
But its creators, undeterred, started posting animated clips on YouTube, and they
quickly went viral. So far, three DVD volumes of the series Galinha Pintadinha have
each gone on to sell more than 1.5 million copies in Brazil.
And even for indie properties with good broadcast placement, savvy digital and
social media applications may give them a boost over their competitors. For example,
Nerd Corps Entertainment head of global licensing Juli Boylan says the company took
a risk in building an interactive department to create iOS titles based on Slugterra
(see “Slugging it out,” p. 39) in 2010 when the economy was not in great shape. But
she feels it had to. “Slugterra is on Disney XD, which is building distribution, so we
thought, ‘How do we get it out in front?’” The answer was developing for iOS and
the web, and maintaining a strong social media presence. Essentially, she says, it’s
enabled Nerd Corps to publish new Slugterra content on various platforms consistently,
keeping it top-of-mind with fans and potential retail and licensing partners.
See you in Vegas!
Lana
May/June 2013 • Volume 18, Issue 4
www.kidscreen.com
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10 May/June 2013