The following is an expanded version of a presentation made at an Alliance for Children and Television seminar on interactive media for children, by Bill Sweetman, the idea guy at Electric Eye Multimedia, Toronto, a multimedia consulting company dedicated to helping entertainment companies profit from interactive multimedia. He can be reached at ideaguy@ideaguy.com.

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Should producers of children’s television care about multimedia? The answer is most definitely Yes! Today’s children are the multimedia generation. Interactive multimedia mirrors the nonlinear way that kids think. They want to be the ones in control. They want to work at their own pace. They want to explore. It’s not that today’s kids have shorter attention spans; they have ‘multimedia’ minds.

Here are some statistics to consider:

In a recent survey, it was revealed that three out of 10 Canadian households have personal computers. On average, kids in those households watched an hour less of television per week. Their most popular activity on the computer? Playing games.

Kids are also going online, logging onto America Online, CompuServe, Prodigy, and the Internet. Sixteen percent of u.s. children aged eight to 12 use online services at home and 47% of u.s. children aged 12 to 15 think that it is ‘in’ to use online services.

It’s time to take multimedia seriously. It’s time to exploit the opportunities.

Any discussion of multimedia business opportunities for children’s television producers must focus on content, and the most valuable type of content is content that is unique to you, content that builds upon its own identity, and content to which you have the rights. It may be cliched, but it’s also true: content is king.

No one knows exactly what form the so-called ‘information highway’ will ultimately take, nor when this will happen. The only thing certain is that the companies that will survive this media revolution will be the ones that imagine, develop, and own the radically new types of content that will be delivered via the new technology. There is little profit to be made in the ‘distribution’ of this content.

In fact, distribution is due for a major upheaval as new interactive technologies, such as the Internet, allow content providers to bypass traditional layers of ‘middlemen’ and deliver their content directly to their customers.

Your first step should be to explore new business opportunities that can be built from your existing content, and then create new content for traditional (linear) and interactive media.

Let’s talk specifics.

The video game industry is gigantic. Sales will top us$10 billion this year, us$1 billion more than all the revenue from Hollywood movies put together.

Approximately 70% of u.s. homes with teenagers have a video game system, and Canada is not far behind. Why? Because video games are interactive and interactivity is the key to making successful entertainment for today’s kids.

Video games are becoming more and more sophisticated, integrating high-quality graphics and animation with feature-film quality production values.

Regardless of the technology involved, the most successful video game titles combine entertainment with interactivity. The same is even true for ‘educational’ software; if it’s not entertaining and interactive, it d’esn’t sell and it d’esn’t educate.

Whether it’s a video game or a television show, kids still want to see distinctly drawn characters in compelling, original scenarios. That’s where children’s television producers come in; they are experts at entertaining and educating kids, and those skills will always be in demand.

The video game industry is highly competitive. Production requires specialized craftspeople, high-tech equipment, and average budgets of $500,000 and higher. Because of this, there’s more of a hit-driven Hollywood mentality when it comes to choosing content.

The most ‘bankable’ content is thought to come from film and television, where (the thinking g’es) it has already proven itself in the commercial marketplace. If it were only this easy.

While the video game version of Jurassic Park for the Sega Genesis system has proven quite successful, the version for the 3DO system was a flop. More recently, the trend has been to use film and television talent (writers, directors, and producers) to create video game content, rather than to adapt existing film and television content.

There are a number of opportunities for television producers in the video game industry. The primary one is licensing successful branded content to video game developers. This content could be a show, a character, or an environment. This licensing would best be done on a project-by-project basis, and only for content that has proven itself successful in the North American market; unfortunately, there is no such thing as a Canadian multimedia market.

This type of licensing could also apply to future content that you develop and/or produce. Keep in mind, however, that the idea is not to take existing video footage and try to make it interactive. The market has shown, time and time again, that it is seldom possible to create something compelling from so-called ‘repurposed’ material, especially if it’s intended for a younger audience.

The trick is to capture the spirit, the attitude, the look and feel of the original property, yet all the while focus on making an entertaining and interactive product that features unique characters and a compelling experience.

Another avenue for children’s television producers to explore is the Internet. It’s the fastest growing medium of all time ­ and its popularity and capabilities will continue to develop rapidly over the next few years. In just two years, the Internet went from a text-only medium to one that features video, audio, and animation.

No, television is not going to be replaced by the Internet, but the youth audience for it will continue to diminish. The reason? The Internet will be fully interactive long before television will be, and kids gravitate towards whatever medium allows them to interact.

One of the most successful uses of the Internet by a children’s television producer is by Halifax’s Andrew Cochran Associates. Their Theodore Tugboat Web site based on the television series (// www.cochran.com/tt.html) is one of the most popular destinations for kids on the Internet.

Tens of thousands of kids around the world are fans of the Theodore Tugboat character even though they have never seen the television show.

This is just one of many examples of how a ‘small player’ used the Internet to beat out the likes of Disney, Nickelodeon and ytv to become a significant player in this new medium.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention interactive television, although I’ve always thought the term was an oxymoron. Interactive television is not just around the corner as some would have you believe. The hardware people are still battling one another to see who will provide the ‘boxes’ that will allow consumers to interact with their television.

There are a number of large interactive television trials under way (including a significant one just north of Toronto), but it has yet to be proven just what exactly the market for interactive television is and who will pay for its implementation.

For interactive television to be accepted on a wide basis, the technology needs to be ‘transparent’ to the user. In other words, it’ll need to work as easily as the phone service.

Whatever direction the fabled I-way ends up taking, content ­ movies, television, video games, and music ­ will be what drives it.

The focus of children’s television producers should be on further developing their own unique and compelling content, brand identity, and understanding of interactivity for the day when the highway is finished.

This article, along with a guide to multimedia associations, books, magazines, schools, and other resources is available on the Internet at //www.ideaguy.com.