25/02/2003 - In the article three professionals who took part at the Cartoon Maters, explain the main issues of their job as broadcasters specialised in children programmes. Florence Canta speaks about the acquisition policy adopted by France Télévisions. Susanne Muller explains the ZDF policy and the guide lines of the broadcasters. Finally, Theresa Plummer-Andrews describes the relations between BBC and its partners.

For over 10 years now and at least thrice yearly, the Cartoon Masters, organised by the European Association of Animation Film (Cartoon), have been the place for animation professionals to convene and discuss their industry's particular preoccupations: creativity, finances and technologies.

In this dossier three of the participants explain their job in their broadcasters specialised in children programmes.

Florence Canta, is head of Children programme at France 2 and speaks us of the acquisitions’ politics of France Télévisions;
Susanne Muller, is head of children programme at ZDF and explains us the guide line of the broadcaster ;
Theresa Plummer-Andrews, is head of children programme at BBC and she describes us the relations between BBC an its partners.

The British example: BBC

Theresa Plummer-Andrews is head of children programme at BBC. The children programmes transit on 4 channels: BBC 1, BBC 2, dedicated pre-school channel, CBB, older channel digital channel for child from 4 to 11 years old. The programming is specifically targeted to various audiences.

Is BBC receiving many applications from independent producers?
“BBC receives thousand of proposals every day. BBC is obliged to read and reply to every single one. Separate letter, commenting on the content of the project!
When BBC take the decision to buy a product, the contract between the channel and the producer specifies that the channel is involved in story line, scripts, story boards, model sheets, voice recording, music. BBC has its own editorial line, and it is important that the final product is in line with the editorial line of the channel.
BBC buys also a huge amount of programmes overseas”.

How BBC chooses the projects?
“BBC is looking for all kind of programmes from 1 year old up to 11. Normally BBC looses the audience at 12”.

How is structured the relationship with the creative team?
“The main change in these last 10 years is team working: producers, writers, director, and musicians.
Like every channel, BBC works with known and trustworthy writers. It is the writing job to do the writing. BBC can comment on the writing process, but is not interfering on the job of the writer. As far as the director is concerned the policy is quite the same: the channel must trust these professionals, although BBC frequently works with new people. With the new talent there is always a period of adaptation: the new comers can find some times hard to work with BBC, because the policy of the house is very strict: we cant go so far with children.

Is BBC working with others broadcasters?
“Yes, BBC worked in very big co-production involving 18 countries and many languages. In such cases it is important to work in small working groups. It is impossible to work with huge committees, and ask comments to every single partner”.

Does Japanese series have a different vision of limits?
“Limits are the same. The difference between a programme produced by BBC and a Japanese channel is editing. In BBC there are teams working on editing. Some scenes can have very violent images, but they will not be transmitted”.

Cartoon Master Halle, Germany, April 2002

The German example: ZDF

Susanne Muller is head of children programme at ZDF, which provides programmes for ZDF, and for KIKA, Kinder Kanaal.

What is the ZDF policy concerning children programmes?
“ZDF broadcast children’s programmes only in the mornings of the week for an audience going from 2 age old to 13 old. ZDF offers a broad variety of programmes ranges: from movies, to pre-schools magazines, light entertainment shows, from comedy to science, animation and action.
In total ZDF has twelve and half hours of programming for kids, of which about 12 slots of animation episodes. Animation represents 45 per cent of the schedule. 40 per cent are first runs and 60 per cent are repeats.
The overall budget for animation is about 40 millions euros. This amount includes the money ZDF can spend for Kinder Kanaal. 15 millions euros are spent for animation, half of it for co-production and half of it for acquisitions. Per year ZDF acquires or co-produces about 350 hours of episodes and 150 short episodes representing 10.000 minutes of programmes.
For the co-production side, ZDF is working mainly with US, France, Spain and UK.”

What are the criteria for selecting a programme?
“In Germany there is a lucky situation for animation compared to other countries: there are no national quota. The legislator says that ZDF have to inform educate, entertain children. These requirements can not meet all the time!
ZDF prefers series that are entertainment but have underlines messages:
- social message: ‘take care of your friend’;
- environmental message: ’take care of your world is the only one you have’;
- cultural message: ’a real friend does not consider the colour of your skin’.

The idea behind this policy is simple: help the children’s in their development”.

What is the editorial line?
“The main concept is variety of programmes. Television is a bit like food: I do not want my children have only hamburger and chips! To match this criterion ZDF is programming different types of programmes: 2D to 3D, volume”.

How to decide on a project?
“The first criterion is what target audience ZDF want to reach: pre-school, 5 to 8 or older?
Which time slot has to be filled and where there are lacks of programmes? Which kind of animation does the audience expect from ZDF? What are the trends?
The main criterion for choosing a programme is the schedule, but it is also determinated by a general strategy: if there is the need to capture more boys, there will be more adventure programmes. The other most important criterion is content and look: is there a nice story? Is there an interesting design? If the characters are already known though books?”

What about original ideas?
“Original ideas have a chance if the concept is good and convincing, if the characters are well presented or if the bible is well prepared. ZDF needs to know if a certain standard of quality can be reached and this level can be kept, if the series can receive support from good scriptwriters, animators etc.

The financial criterion to enter in co-production is of course important. The money is becoming scarce in broadcaster houses!
Another important aspect is to know the people and partners involved in the project. There is a component of personal taste, not all the decisions are objective, even if the decisions are taken in team and the ZDF readers check some thousand programmes offers per year”.

What is the level of involvement of ZDF when financing a programme?
“Once ZDF decides to co-produce a programme, the people from the production department are fully involved in all the production stages. There are three major points why a broadcaster wants to co-produce:
- the broadcaster is able to have creative input and have a series that really meets the needs of the channel;
- a broadcaster can decide to produce a particular project to avoid that others competitors get it;
- there is always an expectation to have long running rights and possibility to further exploitation.

ZDF wants to approve all the production steps of the production process: story lines, the characters, scripts, storyboards, voices, animatics, sounds, composer. In the end the broadcaster takes and controls the dub. If something goes wrong the channel can decide change the story”.

Cartoon Master Halle, Germany, April 2002

The French Example: France 2

Florence Canta is the head of acquisitions at France 2

The general French context
“The group was formed three years ago. This public service brings together 3 channels: France 5, France 2 and France 3.
Inside the France Télévision group, the idea was that in the context of increasingly tough competition every year, the 3 channels shouldn’t have to compete between themselves for the youth audience.
So the bosses of the group decided that:
- pre-school programmes would be shown on 5;
- productions aimed at the 4-10 age range would be on France 3;
- programmes for older kids (11-14 years) would be broadcast on France 2.

The channel that has the most projects and the highest volume of production and more important financing is France 3. This broadcaster targets the age range that is covered by the highest number of European channels.
It’s budget is around Euro 15m, double that for the production of France 2.
Inside the France Télévision group, France 2 is considered to be the channel for drama. Youth programming is concentrated on Wednesday and Saturday mornings. 6% of the channel’s programmes are for this sector, with 41 hours of annual production on animation, and a total of 75 hours of this type of programme broadcast on the channel. They’re not large amounts.

As for the rest of the French audio-visual sector, there are private channels (TF1, M6, Canal+), and cable channels. The competition in the cable channel market is more important for youth programming. The audience of young people, spread across the whole day, has now reached 12%”.

What are the consequences of this for France 2?

“The fact that kids programming goes out on Wednesday and Saturday mornings has financial repercussions. The morning slots are considered ‘dead times’, and in order to maintain the financial balance of France 2, it’s not possible to go over an average investment of Euro 1,360,000 for a 26 part series of 26 minutes per programme.
The main investment of our channel is concentrated on ‘prime-time’ and is mainly spent on drama.
The fact that the channel has to concentrate on a teenage audience also poses problems. France 2 is the only French channel to have a strategy aimed at teenagers.
There’s a very similar situation in Europe. Most of the producers and youth broadcasters concentrate on the 4-10 year old age range. So it’s very difficult, in fact almost impossible to co-produce programmes for the adolescent market with other European broadcasters”.

What type of projects is France 2 looking for?
“The projects have to fit into a programme schedule which is mainly made up of “live” drama series for American, English and Australian kids….
The problem is to integrate animation shows in the middle of “live” series.
It’s only three years since France 2’s strategy has been clearly defined. The first productions with this new editorial policy are only coming on stream now. An example is ‘Wombat City’, the first 2001 production. It’s an animation series for teenagers: the graphics are strong, it deals with new subjects and the dialogue is based on humour.
It appeared to be too difficult to achieve these aims in an episode lasting 26 minutes. So France 2 chose to make each episode 13 minutes long. France 2 managed to integrate this series in the middle of other ‘live’ programmes, without losing audience share”.

What projects are being planned?
“Starting from September 2002, there’s a new series called ‘Les durs du mur’ (a 7 minute format that has never been done by France 2 before). It’s an edgy mini-series that as taken risks with the graphics. It’s about the adventures of a group of young people, set in an imaginary suburb.
The cartoonist Yack Foczniak uses humour. The project was done totally by an independent producer, who was also the author and director of the series”.

Cartoon Master Cardiff, UK, June 2002