TORONTO – Teletoon Canada Inc. will be bringing Cartoon Network and its late night alter ego Adult Swim to Canadian airwaves later this year.
Cartoon Network, the 20 year-old Turner Broadcasting-owned cable service which is already available in 168 other countries, targets kids aged 8-14 with shows such as The Amazing World of Gumball, Adventure Time (pictured below) and Regular Show between 6 am and 9 pm ET/PT. That’s followed by its “edgier” Adult Swim late-night lineup that appeals to teens and young adults.
Teletoon Canada president Len Cochrane told Cartt.ca that consumer research conducted by his company last year found that 80% of respondents wanted to watch Cartoon Network here in Canada.
“I was shocked when I saw that number which just reinforced that what we were doing was the right thing to do”, Cochrane said in an interview. “It’s a great opportunity for Cartoon Network and Teletoon to extend the brand, and it just seems to be a natural evolution for us. Cartoon Network was interested in bringing the brand to Canada, and because of our programming relationship going back many years, it was a natural thing for us to partner.”
That partnership includes a programming, trademark and branding deal for exclusive Cartoon Network content that has never been seen before in Canada, plus almost 2,000 half-hours of vintage Cartoon Network and Adult Swim programming. It also includes the linear, broadband, mobile, and video-on-demand rights to the programming in what Trent Locke, Teletoon’s VP of business operations, describes as a “fully integrated deal”.
“(Teletoon and Cartoon Network) are definitely complementary channels. This (deal) fills a gap in distribution and gives us different avenues for advertising opportunities”, he told Cartt.ca. “What’s exciting to us on the Adult Swim property is that the consumer of that kind of content often goes on-line and gets it over-the-top or illegally downloads it, so this is our opportunity to repatriate that audience and bring it back to television and the bigger screen.”
Locke declined to elaborate on the status of any distribution agreements for the new channel other than to say that “there’s a lot of interest” from the country’s major BDUs.
Ad-supported Cartoon Network will be available in both standard and high definition at launch. While Teletoon does not currently hold a French license for the channel, it is planning to schedule nested blocks on its French service Télétoon as well as make select programming available on-line, through mobile and VOD.
A consumer marketing campaign touting Cartoon Network and Adult Swim is in the works, and Locke said that messaging will be out by March Break.
