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Digital catches fire

Posted By Nico Franks On 23-07-2014 @ 4:08 pm In Features | Comments Disabled

Hit Entertainment’s milestone partnership with online retailer Amazon to bring Fireman Sam to a new generation of viewers could soon become the norm. Nico Franks reports.

Fireman Sam

Fireman Sam

Hit Entertainment, home to classic preschool brands such as Thomas & Friends and Bob the Builder, entered uncharted territory for the relaunch of one of its oldest pieces of IP in the US market.

Having first appeared on UK television screens in the 1980s, Fireman Sam is without doubt the kind of evergreen children’s property that is the envy of most distributors.

The story of a charismatic Welsh fireman who regularly saves the small town of Pontypandy from mini-disasters, the previously stop-motion property got the CGI treatment in 1998 and went on to air around the world, including on Sprout in the US.

However, Mattel-owned Hit, sensing Sam had unfinished business stateside, turned to Amazon to make the retail giant and VoD platform the exclusive US home [1] to the friendly fireman.

The logic of the initiative, which sees Amazon bring its video streaming business together with its retail operation for the first time, is clear. It also highlights the upper hand Amazon has over its most intense rival, Netflix.

Fireman Sam has many years’ worth of highly lucrative merchandise just sitting in Amazon’s warehouses, waiting to be added to mum or dad’s basket and delivered to the door. In many ways, it makes it hugely convenient for parents to appease their kids.

However, there are also concerns regarding how easy it could be for a child to go on their own living room spending spree. Soon, Amazon’s 1-Click ordering button could become the stuff of parents’ nightmares.

But Edward Catchpole, Hit’s senior VP and general manager, is keen to emphasise that the producer-distributor will always aim to keep parents and carers onside.

“Everything we do is done under the FisherPrice brand and the essence of it is that it’s a trusted brand,” Catchpole says. “With anything we do with our franchises, there is a relationship of trust that you put at risk at your own jeopardy.”

Edward Catchpole

Edward Catchpole

“Mum wants to retain control over a child’s purchase. That’s absolutely right and I don’t think it should change.”

Hit’s move to sell one of its biggest properties exclusively to a digital buyer does not signal the end of its relationships with linear channels by any means, Catchpole affirms.

“We’re not moving away from linear models, they’re still incredibly important. Those linear partnerships will continue to be important, because they’re moving on to digital as quickly as everyone else.”

Heavyweight digital businesses like Amazon and Netflix are now definitely on the radar of distributors around the world and have helped to counteract the loss of revenues that came after the DVD market crashed.

This gives the owners of rights to proven properties – series that may have already been big hits on linear TV – a huge amount of bargaining power. After all, with a new audience coming through every few years or so, it’s much harder for kids’ TV series to go out of date.

In turn, producers are already changing the way they design, develop and make new content in reaction to ways in which kids watch content now, to give them the edge over stuffy library series.

After all, in the not too distant future it won’t be enough to simply place library content from a different era on to a digital platform without it looking seriously dated.

Hit is already working on how it can “build, develop and design great stories that are engaging and are designed to work in the digital space,” Catchpole says.

Unlike with linear TV schedules, weaker content cannot be supported by piggybacking it on the success of more popular programmes. With VoD, it will simply be ignored and left to gather digital dust.

Accordingly, producers will have to up their game, Catchpole says. “The scary thing is that if a show hasn’t captivated them in the first two minutes, they’re coming straight out of that story and flicking to the next one,” Catchpole says.

The tipping point will come when smart TVs become commonplace, Catchpole believes, as small children have no difficulty in mastering their interfaces, as seen from their approach to tablets. Then whether it is linear or digital distribution becomes “irrelevant,” he says.

Catchpole is unequivocal: “When that happens, you’ve to make damn sure as an organisation that your content is exceptional, because it will really start to separate out those pieces of content that truly engage and those that don’t.”


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[1] exclusive US home: https://www.c21media.net/amazon-hit-pair-up-in-us/

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