25/02/2003

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