OTTAWA – Yes, Virginia, there really is a way to earn separate revenues for multi-platform content linked to an existing TV series, and it really is possible to ensure the Internet, in particular, offers material distinctly different from what’s on the TV set, and from what every other site offers.
“The sky really has fallen,” says Kevin Gillis, executive producer and managing partner of Breakthrough Animation, a five-year-old division of Toronto’s Breakthrough Films & Television. “It’s up to us as producers and broadcasters to figure out how to invest in content that people are coming to, independent of TV shows.”
Gillis spoke to Cartt.ca following a panel discussion on the second day of the Television Animation Conference, itself part of the annual Ottawa International Animation Festival, which wrapped on the weekend. He says Breakthrough Animation has discovered, through recent deals and discussions with Corus Entertainment’s YTV and with Disney, that it’s possible to earn revenue for multi-platform content independent of series fees.
The key to success is to bring added value to the discussion of what’s to be on the show’s web site. He says the company has recently completed 44 minutes worth of “mobisode” material, with segments varying in length from 30 seconds to a few minutes each, aimed at the Net and mobile digital platforms, and all linked to Breakthrough’s YTV series Captain Flamingo.
Gillis says this “offline content” is launching on YTV and around the world this fall. “It’s all totally independent of (what’s created for) the television series. Some clips are Broadway song spoofs, physical gags, behind-the-scenes (tidbits) and jokes you’ll never see in the body of the show. Captain Flamingo lives in Halverston, so through the clips – mobisodes intended to screen on the web, mobiles or as viral content on YouTube or social media – the audience gets a sense of life in Halverston. They aren’t necessarily plot-driven. The media are non-linear and so is the content.
“We’re trying to give the audience an experience that’s not attached to the television. We’re making the Net, for instance, a destination that’s an alternative choice.
“It was a learning experience for us at Breakthrough, and from a financing perspective it was great. The broadcaster came to the table and said ‘We have to find new money to do this.’”
As recently as last February, the possibility of earning worthwhile dollars, beyond TV licence fees, seemed remote. The Canadian Television Fund had no immediate plans to support “the auxiliary platforms.” CTF president Valerie Creighton told delegates at the Canadian Film and Television Production Association conference that because multi-platform business models are created case-by-case, it’s hard for the CTF to “find the sameness on which to base funding principles… But the time has come to take a look.”
Producers at the February event commented that they weren’t expecting any variation from the dominant approach in which auxiliary content would be produced out of the TV program’s existing budget. Rather than budgeting TV show add-ons separately, Decode Entertainment president Steven DeNure said his company does one budget and sees “the property as a whole.”
Back at the animation conference, meanwhile, Gillis says the extra content for Captain Flamingo, now in production on its second season of 52 eleven-minute episodes, is self-budgeted, in effect. Breakthrough’s partners are YTV, along with Jetix Europe (formerly Fox Kids Europe), which is majority owned by Disney.
Auxiliary content is promotional material, Gillis says, “living and dying on its own merit.”
In Canada, he says, YTV has organized ad sales and sponsor tie-ins for the content; elsewhere, broadcasters get first opportunity to do so and if they don’t, Breakthrough will have to find other marketing models. “We have had offers for independent content in Brazil,” he says, “to screen at bus stations.”
Susan Tolusso is an Ottawa-based writer who covered the Ottawa International Animation Fest for Cartt.ca.
