KidScreen Magazine: About reaching children through entertainment

KidScreen Magazine: The leading business publication in the world serving the information needs and interests of kids’ entertainment executives. Published 9 times a year, KidScreen is delivered to 13,000 kid’s entertainment decision-makers around the world, in addition to bonus copies distributed at major industry events.

KidScreen Daily - KidScreen’s new daily email highlighting the news, trends and opportunities that will keep you in the loop. Read it each morning for Lana Castleman and Gary Rusak’s views on what you need to know.

KidScreen Summit - KidScreen's premier annual event (February 7-9, 2007, Sheraton New York Hotel & Towers), which has quickly grown into the world's leading conference on the business of kids entertainment hosting 1400 attendees from around the world. Industry leaders. Engaging topics. Serious fun.

Special Reports:
P51 FIRST TAKE
Our revamped Hollywood hotsheet delivers the earliest intel on L&M and promo opportunities brewing around kids and family features in every major studio’s pipeline.

Betting that US tween girls are still keen on all things high school, but in the mood for something edgier than Disney’s squeaky-clean offerings, Paramount Licensing is mounting a girl-targeted program around the first highschool musical—Grease. ...

P59 GENERATION
Canada’s first kidcaster celebrates 20 years in the biz.

Cover: Fresh from the cutting room, our cover this issue features a few sneak-peek pics from some of the most highly anticipated kids movies in the making.

Visit KidScreen Magazine, July/August 2008 Website

View Digital Edition   |   Download a PDF

Highlights from this issue...
11 up front
Japanese ad giant Dentsu lands in the US with a kids mandate and budget

16 ppd
The Christian TV universe opens up to morally-led children’s fare

22 licensing
Kids footwear players innovate their way through a price hike

27 retail
Reaping righteous returns from Christian specialty retail

30 marketing
Burger King finds footing in healthy food arena with Positive Steps plan

32 digital bytes
Dr. Warren Buckleitner decodes the digital kid in a brand-new KS column series

83 coolwatch
Recycling rocks! Kids weigh in on the coolest Earth-saving activities

Download KidScreen Magazine, July/August 2008

PDF format, 31MB, 84Pages.

EDITORIAL:
Movie magic casts unique spell on kids

I’m reading a fabulous book called The Gross right now. It’s written by Variety VP and editor-in-chief Peter Bart, and it explores the confluence of forces—political, historical, egotistical, capitalistic, what have you—that shaped 1998’s summer blockbuster landscape.

The whole book is gripping, but there’s a particularly fascinating chapter devoted to the role played by key movie biz publications and the impact that their pre-summer box-office predictions have on stock valuations. Although Bart focuses almost exclusively on adult pics, including Armageddon, Saving Private Ryan and There’s Something About Mary, he makes an off-hand comment in this section about kids features that really stuck with me. He notes that it’s very difficult to accurately predict the blockbuster potential of kids and family features because so much of their revenue comes from home entertainment and consumer products sales.

True enough. But as I prepared to watch Toy Story for what had to have been the 50th time this weekend with my two-year-old (who has only been watching feature-length movies for a few months now), it struck me that we may need a different metric for measuring blockbuster status in the kids industry.

I know Kira’s hardly unique in her apparently insatiable appetite for watching her favorite DVDs over and over again—every kid spends years going through this stage of wanting familiar entertainment experiences. So it seems to me that this kind of obsessive passion for a movie is far more valuable in terms of long-term brand power, franchise potential and sustainability than a one-time US$200-million box-office take. And in terms of using consumer products sales as a barometer, these numbers only reflect the tip of the iceberg of demand for movie-based products, as any parent who has ever ventured into a Wal-Mart in July with their kids in tow will tell you.

It doesn’t even stop at mass or at current releases. We were on a cherry run at a local fruit market recently, where two slightly older kids were playing quite happily with a pair of slightly worse-for-the-wear Woody and Buzz Lightyear dolls. As is typical for a two-year-old, Kira was too shy to try and get in on the action, but she has talked about those dolls every day since.

I must confess that these days I’m trolling the pages of eBay hard looking for product that’s in limited supply until Disney re-releases Toy Story (October ‘09) and Toy Story 2 (February ‘10) in 3-D and then follows up with Toy Story 3 that June. And if that’s not a true measure of a movie’s market impact, then I don’t know what is.

(For a full rundown on hot kids theatrical projects in the studio pipeline, check out our newly redesigned First Take feature starting on page 51.)

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