OTTAWA – In the animation business, where technological revolution has been commonplace since Canada’s Norman McLaren began drawing directly onto film stock here 65 years ago, today’s multi-platform hype is just the latest phenomenon.
It’s a development that poses challenges and creates opportunity, according to the keynote speaker and panellists at the third annual Television Animation Conference, held last week as part of the 30th Ottawa International Animation Festival.
As Michael Ouweleen, senior vice-president programming and development at Cartoon Network, told TAC delegates, “In my meetings, there’s sort of a smell of fear in the room. Everyone in television, I must confess, is beginning to feel like dinosaurs.”
But he’s been in this position before, when the Internet arrived and pundits regularly predicted the death of TV. The difference is that “broadband is making (content streaming) viable this time. It’s entertaining and it doesn’t take forever to download. There are tons of broadband channels in the U.S.”
Ouweleen kicked off a series of discussions on how to move animated clips, shorts, series and features via TV, or directly, to the web and wireless mobile devices, and make money doing it.
“Everyone talks like it’s a revolution, but really it’s an evolution…that all of us have benefited from,” Ouweleen says. “At the start of the renaissance of digital media, television is not dead. In fact, in many ways it’s more alive than ever. The age of digital content gives us all freedom to try whatever, as long as what we make has a voice.”
Content with a voice could resonate far, if not wide, given that the approximately two billion cell phones around the world outnumber TVs four-to-one, according to Fred Seibert, a partner in New York’s Frederator Studios and Channel Frederator, a cartoon podcasting pioneer.
“Seventy-one billion dollars (U.S.) was spent on content for mobile phones in 2005, but (that figure) is rising fast. There’s a 75% saturation rate for the Internet in Canada… and the podcast audience in the U.S. is now 10 million” but may be 10 times that size by 2010. “A year ago, we didn’t even have Channel Frederator.”
While TAC panellists agreed wireless mobile will continue to be the next “it” destination for digital content, they disagreed over which content to direct to which devices. Duncan Kennedy, executive director of Mobifest, Canada’s first made-for-mobile film festival, said: “The very important difference between the net and cell phones” is that mobile handsets are “revenue extraction machines.” He adds that signal providers are sharing revenue with producers.
But panelist Steve Billinger comments that cell phones are not the best destination. Billinger, senior vice-president of Cookie Jar Broadcast in Toronto, develops and launches edutainment product for all platforms for the kid’s entertainment producer (he’s a former Extend Media and Bell ExpressVu exec). He argues, “Phones are way overrated as a broadcast device. Don’t concentrate on pushing episodes onto phones. Concentrate on moving short animations to iPods and PSPs. Less than one percent of the market uses video on cells in North America.”
He says pay-per-use billing structures cost heavy users like him several hundred dollars per month. Cells are more economical in Japan, according to panelist Ryosuke Aoike, an animator and creative director based at aoike.ca in Montreal, because users can pay a flat monthly fee.
But if downloading to mobile phones rings up huge bills in North America, where will consumers look for mobile content, and how will producers make money providing it?
Billinger says low-cost techniques such as Flash animation allow producers to create half-hours for about $35,000, which is very affordable, especially given the existence of various public new media funds. Producers can sell a series of shorts to a broadcaster and then count distribution to mobiles as “add-on revenue.” As an example in development, he displayed a screen with six boxes, each featuring different animated scenes. “Each one can be blown to full screen, telling its own story, and aimed at Kindergarten students. These can be played on computer, iPod, PSP, etcetera. We’re not selling them as shows but as a whole body of integrated content.”
“These new digital destinations are quickly turning into a revenue source of significance,” says Seibert. “In emerging media, now you’re going to start with nothing and in 30 years will have made a career out of ‘emerging media’.”
Still, he is quick to add – and his comments were echoed by panelists throughout the conference – that building a great brand still takes precedence over trying to add distribution channels. “At the source, it’s all about making things that people want to see. I don’t believe in the pay-for-download model. We should give (the content) away for free and put an ad next to it.”
This comment led to an extended discussion about the need to create content that is tailored to mobile media and tells a compelling story. “Because,” argues Seibert, “new media are a medium of new discovery. Old brands are so intent on extending their brands they forget to reinvent their brands for the new media.”
Sue Tolusso is a freelance writer based in Ottawa.
