Working as a hired producer on the Sirius Express series for the Elokas Co-operative, I’ve run into a problem common to producers: We’ve shown the pilot episode to dozens of kids from different age groups, and thus arrived at our target age of 6-9 years. However, we didn’t get selected for this years Cartoon Forum (Europe’s most important coproduction and financing event for animation) and the main reason we were given was that our age target was off. In their opinion the show has a 5-7 years target group. But how can we know which figure is more correct? How did we arrive at such different targets?
Of course, this may have to do with any number of factors, starting with the fact that Finnish kids surely have different viewing habits than say Spanish children. But ultimately it boils down to adults making decisions on behalf of children: What do kids want to see on TV?
And on what proof do these adults base their decisions? The only tangible facts they can get their hands on: the audience ratings for channels. These are gathered through devices which record who in the representative households watches what and when. This information makes up the ratings used to determine which shows are hot and which aren’t. For hot shows you can charge top dollar for advertising air time, for others you can’t.
This system has been the target of much criticism over time, but the advertisers have remained happy. The TV networks are in an interesting situation, as they basically have two different customers: The audience watching the shows and the advertisers paying the networks.
From what I’ve heard from colleagues in Berlin, the situation in Germany has become worse in recent years. One producer told me that ZDF, one if not the most important buyers of kid’s animation, has stopped buying pre-school content almost completely in favour of family shows. The broadcaster’s problem is that they too need to attract an audience that is as large as possible, so airing shows watched by all siblings and maybe their parents as well, is better business.
But where does this leave more specialised shows? And again, can you really decide what kids want to view just by looking at the lowest common denominator? I’m not sure this situation is very likely to change, as TV stations are run on advertising money and TV ads are targeted at the masses. What we can do as producers, is either try to conform to the ratings, or go via a more labourous route and build a following for our shows elsewhere – demonstrate potential. Then we can present the project to a broadcaster in light of what we’ve learnt about our audience.
It’s really a matter of guessing vs. knowing. Guessing what kid’s might like based on representative samples and past experience, or knowing that your audience actually connects with your characters and your production. As always, guessing is the easy way.
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