One thing that I love about the Internet is that it allows voices to be heard in a way never possible before. If a product or service completely misses the mark, it will be all over the ‘net the very day it launches. If a customer service rep sends insulting emails to a customer, we’ll hear about it. If an effort to boost sales from girls results in more gender limitations, well, you get where I’m going. And, for those of us creating or making anything at all, it makes it much easier to get a sense of how we’re doing. It gives us information which can inform all our future decisions.

Feedback is fast and loud on the Internet.

It’s very powerful. It’s democracy.

But it can also be like picking up your pitchforks and torches and storming a castle.

Last week, CBeebies launched a new format for Waybuloo, the meditating children’s show, during its bedtime hour. They cut it down to about ten minutes and added a narrator. The Internet did not like it. No sir, the Internet didn’t like it one bit. An outcry made its way around Twitter, with mail addresses to those in CBeebies being distributed so those voices could be heard.

And those voices were heard.

CBeebies made the decision to revert to the older format of Waybuloo. All was back to normality, the CBeebies bedtime hour was restored to its former glory and we could all sleep peacefully again.

I don’t see much of Waybuloo and I didn’t catch the new version. From what I read, the narrator went against its peaceful, gentle feel. So that could have been a bad move and, if so, it’s easy to see why it might upset fans of the show. And I give credit to CBeebies for listening to their audience and being willing to drop the new version even if that meant letting go of many decisions and a lot of work. But then I think about how many episodes of that new format aired…

One.

Just one.

When a show is well-established, and Waybuloo is, change will always be difficult to its fans. We fear change. That’s our thing, it’s what we do. But give something a chance and maybe, just maybe, some merit will be revealed. I can’t think of the amount of comedy shows, for example, that I dismissed after one episode only to find them grow on me and find myself really clicking with the humour. Sometimes it takes a while for us to get past simply the notion that this is new.

I remember some years ago Sesame Street aired a few episodes without the Elmo’s World sequences. Apparently they didn’t go down well and children were asking, ‘Where’s Elmo’s World?!’ So they put it back. But I couldn’t help think, you have aired this show with Elmo’s World for the entire lifetime of that audience. Of course they’re going to ask where it is if you take it out. I could throw a rotten fish head at a child for a year and then, one day, walk by without doing it and the child would shout, ‘Hey! Where’s my fish head?!’ The first reaction will always be, hey, this is different!

It’s what happens when we get over that that counts.

So I don’t know about Waybuloo and what way that should have gone. But I do know that feedback on the Internet is fast and loud and, very often, we react to change simply for being change. Feedback is immensely valuable. But mob rule..? How can we tell one from the other? Perhaps there are times we should take a moment to consider before reaching for our pitchforks and torches, just to let things settle. And, if we’re the one in that castle being stormed, yes we need to do what is best for our audience but maybe, just maybe, we need to build better defenses to give ourselves time to work out exactly what ‘best’ is.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, business, Internet, waybuloo

Here’s why we could do with more relevant local content here in Ireland:

My daughter calls wool ‘yarn’.

She has used ‘you betcha’ instead of a simple yes.

She once called nappies ‘diapers’.

She frequently uses the phrase, ‘reds under the beds’.

Okay, so I made that last one up but, as good as some of the US television is, we may have just a touch too much of it here in Ireland. The balance is a little off. Worse still, the US shows we get are often the least educational because they travel easier when it comes to localisation. We’re likely missing some of the best the US has to offer.

Language is just an obvious symptom. An indicator that a child’s world view is being formed. It actually goes much deeper than language. And it’s important to realise that what seems culturally relevant on the outside might not be on the inside. For example, colouring Barney green and calling him Seamus wouldn’t really make the show any more Irish. It’s just window-dressing. And yet a show with a purple dinosaur in a fantasy world could be culturally relevant to Irish children if the core delivers something needed by those Irish children and presents it in a way that works with the culture and ideals. Culture does not equal window-dressing. We need to look deeper.

It’s not always easy.

But it’s important.

Not just Ireland of course. Every country could do with good relevant local content.

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Tags: animation, business, Children, education, Ireland

A television show is, in many ways, like new technology. You may have something completely new, be filling a need, have some edge over everything else in a saturated market, but none of that matters if people don’t know about it.

In both television and technology, the value is often in the experience. That’s something that’s very hard to advertise. You can easily tell people about the features of a device, even of a TV show, but the experience?

For that, you need the early adopters.

You need those people willing to take a chance early, who get excited simply by something new, who want to try it out and give it a go. If they like it, those early adopters will spread the word – will tell people about not just the features, but the experience. People who will talk about it, blog about it and let people know what this new thing is contributing to their lives. I can check my Facebook in church! Wow, I’m totally consumed by the mystery of this weird polar bear on the island! And so on.

You need to be good to the early adopters.

In children’s television, it gets very tricky. Young children generally don’t talk about what they’re watching in the same way adults do. If a child just caught the first airing of a show and she loved it, she may tell nobody. The parent might never know and may never put that show on again. So, in absence of that, your early adopters are actually the parents. You need to give them a reason to try it. To take that punt and put it on for their child. Spread it throughout their family. They may even tell other parents – a rare occurrence, admittedly, but it can still happen.

With the parents being early adopters, it’s important to bear in mind their needs. What does a parent want in a television show? What do they want for themselves, and what do they want for their children? These may not be the same thing. What can we do for parents?

Bear in mind the early adopters.

That said, there are ways of getting the children themselves talking. That’s something that can be exploited in a very cynical way, making the parents your enemy in the process – not a great idea in this day and age because, with so much choice, parents are pretty quick to bring down the banhammer. But some shows, just a few (and COSMO is one of them), can get children talking while being really good to parents. Those shows get both sets of early adopters talking, and for the right reasons. If you’re in children’s television, shouldn’t that be our goal?

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Tags: advertising, animation, business, Children, writing

Many years ago when I was studying animation, we were given a summer assignment for life drawing – pick some aspect of our work, and improve it. Come back better. When we came back after the summer, the teacher went around the room to find out what people worked on. Most were along the lines of this – I’m really bad at drawing hands so I worked to try to improve that and so I drew hundreds of hands.

That’s a good thing, right?

Sure it is. We could all do at getting better at drawing hands.

But I didn’t draw hands. Or feet. Or anything all that tricky.

I enjoyed drawing my dog, Reg, and I was pretty good at it (even if I say so myself) so I drew more of him. Lots more of him. Now it’s not like I didn’t have plenty of weaknesses to work on. I did. But I enjoyed drawing dogs and, by working at it, I might go from ‘pretty good’ to ‘great’.

And while everyone else was showing less stinky versions of their weaknesses, I showed my strengths. And it set the tone for the year ahead.

So what was the right approach? Well there’s a discussion on goals to be had, but that’s for another post. This post is about the idea that, to get better, the assumption is often that you work on your weaknesses. On first glance, it’s something that seems to make sense. By focusing on weaknesses, those things that might let your work down or might disappoint, you’re trying to eliminate the minuses. Empty that ‘cons’ list on the pros and cons that make up who you are or your work. But consider what number you arrive at if you get fixated on eliminating all minuses…

You arrive at zero.

And the unfortunate reality is that zero impresses nobody. Nobody ever bought anything thinking, well, I suppose there’s nothing technically wrong with it. Zero is nothing.

If you just pick at the negatives (and a lot of people do, often incorrectly calling it ‘constructive’ criticism, as if that’s a contribution –  it rarely is), if you worry about what might not work, those rough edges, what might put people off or what could go wrong, you’re aiming for zero. What you need is a positive contribution. Taking that number above zero. Concentrating on what you can add, not eliminate. That’s constructive.  And the fantastic news here is that the effort you put into making a positive contribution will have much more of an effect than that same effort being spent on eliminating a negative.

Making a good thing great has much, much more value than making the bad things okay.

Look at the iPod. Audiophiles say the sound quality isn’t great. The iTunes system can be restrictive and the programme hogs resources. Even now, it has some crazy problems that have carried over to the iPhone. Would it be better if these things were fixed? Absolutely. But people aren’t buying the iPod or iPhone because of what it does badly. They’re buying it because of what it does great.

Positives count much more than negatives.

By all means fix those issues that are easily fixed and certainly don’t tolerate any problems you don’t have to, especially in your own systems. But focus should be not on what you can make acceptable, or least offensive, but on what you can make great, fantastic, impressive. That’s how you stand out, that’s how you shine. It’s how you set the tone with your work. And the best thing? It’s much more fun.

Don’t aim for zero. Zero is nothing.

Aim for great.

Filed under: General Posts by Jay
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Tags: animation, business, creative disobedience, design

Beloved characters being sold off. Value of children’s television being set at zero. All is not rosy in children’s television, especially in the UK. We’re very fortunate here in Ireland to have some excellent support (some not so excellent support but that’s for a whole other post). But support seems thin on the ground in the UK, birthplace of Bagpuss, the Clangers, Peppa Pig, Charlie & Lola, Paddington Bear, Roobarb and countless other children’s classics.

Animation UK released a report earlier in the week on the state of their industry and what they need in order to continue making quality shows. To continue making shows at all. The children’s television business is, at the very least, on shaky ground. Companies folding, people out of work. That’s the industry. The big shocker for me in there was how short they were in financing the fantastic Peppa Pig – they had to turn to friends and family to raise £350,000. Peppa almost never happened. And, right now, other shows aren’t happening.

I don’t expect parents to care about that beyond maybe the odd sympathy nod (you know one of those ‘I understand’ kind of nods – they’re nice). Ultimately, it’s not the job of parents to keep us employed. And yet, what happens to those of us in children’s television does affect parents.

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Where it affects parents is in the quality of the shows their children have access to.

Where it affects parents is in the cultural relevance of the shows their children have access to.

Where it affects parents is in the educational content versus glorified toy ad content in the shows their children have access to.*

Where it affects parents is where it affects their children.

And that’s one place I very much expect parents to care.

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I would argue that television aimed at younger children is the most important television of all. It is around those years that children are learning the most, forming their world view. That’s why this area of television will always need special attention, safe-guarding, constant re-evaluation and an acceptance of nothing less than excellence.

And it’s not just about what your children are watching right now. Humf may be a big deal in your house today but in a few years time, he could mean nothing to your child – it will be High School Musical 74 or the like. And you might be the one parent in your town who doesn’t even own a television. Here’s the bad news – every other parent does, and their children are in your school teaching your children what they picked up from television. Children of all age groups are teaching other children.

If you’re a parent, as I am, you are not isolated. Your children need good television.

So what can you do? Well, talk about it for one thing. Discuss (whether in person or online) good television or bad television. Make it known to people who matter (broadcasters, government officials, even programme makers) if you appreciate what’s being shown, what’s not being shown and what YOU want to see on television for your children.

Demand better television.

Demand local television.

The children’s television model has to change. For it to change for the better, or simply not for the worse, parents need to take control and drive home the value of good television. To my peers, friends and lovers of great children’s television in the UK – I wish you luck and I wish you success. You have set an example for all of us in shows for younger children, from Roobarb all the way to today. One of my proudest moments was being able to be part of the animated Children In Need video, not just because it was for a great cause but because I was honoured to be among such good company and great timeless characters. The UK children’s television industry has made history many times over and should continue doing so. You deserve the support you need.

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*There is a industry-wide conflict here that is apparent in the Animation UK document, which discusses huge markets and high licensing figures while also saying they need government support to remain viable – and yet often the reason other countries have support is because they mostly aren’t viable. Perhaps an acceptance that children’s television isn’t all big business might change perceptions and lead towards a model that isn’t quite as fragile as the current one? After all, when companies like Mattel are willing to buy Hit’s properties for $680 million, it calls the whole lack of viability thing into question. Depends on whether you’re making a great show, or a licensing brand. One is not always compatible with the other, nor should they be… just a personal thought.

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Tags: animation, AnimationUK, business, Children, licensing, support