'X-Men' puts Fox, Saban in winner's circle
In 1976, when Margaret Loesch, now president of Fox Children's Network, worked for NBC-TV, she discovered Stan Lee's Marvel Comics heroes, "X-Men," but she couldn't persuade the network to turn them into a cartoon show.
Loesch went to work for Hanna-Barbera, and while she successfully sold 13 different shows for that company, she couldn't interest any of the networks in "X-Men."
She became president of Marvel and pitched the idea again, even producing a pilot episode. Nobody was interested.
In 1990, she joined Fox. "I picked up the phone and called Stan Lee," she recalls. "I said, 'OK now. Let's do it.' "
Produced by Saban Entertainment with animation by GRAZ Entertainment, "X-Men" has fulfilled Loesch's faith.
"We all have these pet projects in the creative community that year after year you believe in and try to get on the air," Loesch says. "When it finally happens and it works, it's very gratifying."
Since its launch in September 1990, the syndicated Fox cartoon blocks on weekdays and Saturday mornings have made steady inroads against the Disney product which revitalized the genre six years ago under the title "Disney DuckTails."
Armed with new shows from Warner Bros. Animation, such as "Batman: The Animated Series" and "Steven Spielberg's Tiny Toon Adventures," Hanna-Barbera's "Tom & Jerry Kids" and Nelvana's "Beetlejuice," Fox has challenged Disney favorites "Goof Troop,""Darkwing Duck,""Chip 'n' Dale" and "Tailspin." Group W's popular "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," animated by Fred Wolf Films Inc., also remains strong in its third season.
TV animation for kids is a fiercely competitive world. "Ten years ago there were still a lot of timeslots open in syndicated TV," says Fred Wolf, an Oscar-winning animator whose series include "James Bond Jr." and next fall's "The New Adventures of Speed Racer."
"Today, you might have a wonderful show, but where do you put it?" ponders Wolf. "With all the Disney and Warner Bros. material out there, the Fox network, there's very little time left on regular broadcast television."
Russ Barry, of Turner Program Services, whose strongest performer is "Captain Planet," agrees. "Demand for children's advertising is very good." Barry says, "But the number of time periods available is not a real positive factor. It's hard to get good clearances because there's so much product."
Haim Saban, head of Saban Entertainment, attributes the success of "X-Men" in part to a dearth of action shows. "We've seen an erosion of boys action shows in the last few years," Saban says, "with the strong penetration of Disney, whose shows are generally soft comedies with animals."
Another reason for the show's popularity, along with the rest of Fox's children's lineup, is the network's heavy cross-promotion and establishment of the Fox Kids' Club, which boasts 7,500,000 members, with more joining at the rate of 40,000 per month.
"We wanted to be as interactive with our audience as possible," Margaret Loesch says. "The Kids' Club was part of a strategy to build a network where kids felt they could belong and we could have this cross-promotional landscape."
Creating loyalty with the fickle children's audience is tough. All the networks, except NBC, are heavily into cartoon programming.
Many cable channels also feature a great deal of animation, including Showtime ("American Heroes & Legends,""Shelley Duvall's Bedtime Stories"), the Family Channel ("Prince Valiant,""The New Adventures of Madeline"), the USA Network ("Denver, the Last Dinosaur"), MTV ("Liquid Television"), Nickelodeon ("Rugrats,""Ren & Stimpy"), Turner's TBS, TNT, and new Cartoon Network, and, of course, the Disney Channel.
Besides its ongoing series ("Care Bears,""Gummi Bears," and more), The Disney Channel will show many animated specials in 1993, and will have the television debuts of the feature films "101 Dalmatians" (1961) and "FernGully...the Last Rain Forest" (1992).
Many studios and production companies crowd the cartoon field fighting for a peice of the action.
All American Television distributes "The Adventures of T-Rex" from animators Michael Wahl and Lee Gunther.
Universal Cartoon Studios has a new futuristic series, "ExoSquad," and is planning a series based on the movie "Beethoven." MGM is producing a new series of "The Pink Panther," in which the Panther will talk for the first time, to be distributed by Claster Distributing, which also handles "Conan."
MGM's Don Mirisch says the decision to have the Pink Panther speak was made necessary because of the length of the shows. "The old Panther shorts ran six minutes," he observes. "We're doing 11-minute segments and it gets to be more difficult to do more interesting stories, if he doesn't talk."
Claster Distributing vice president Sally Bell says fans of the old Panther shouldn't worry. "He'll talk because kids expect that today," she says. "But in all the scripts, there are still many, many visual jokes."
DIC Enterprises Inc. is on board with "Super Dave,""Sonic the Hedgehog" and a new series, co-produced with Scottish Television and Silvio Berlusconi Communications, called "The Hurricanes." It's about a soccer team traveling the world. DIC also has in the works a series of specials based on "Classics Illustrated."
Zodiac Television, which is owned by Britain's Central Independent TV, also has an international focus with its series, "Widget,""The Mr. Bogus Show," and upcoming "Twinkle, The Dream Being." Those series are animated by Calico Ltd., which made noises with its recent special, "The Moo Family Holiday Hoe-Down," distributed by Group W.
The Hardy Co. has two animated series in development, "Pecos Bill," a Western , and "The Dunsky's," about a Russian Marxist family that inherits a hotel in Venice Beach, Calif., and moves in.
The Where's Waldo Co., which produces the popular children's puzzle books, has two interactive specials, "Waldo in Birthdayland" and "Around the World in Daze."
Steadily making inroads into the frenzied animation community, Turner's newly launched Cartoon Network is already in 4-million homes.
Betty Cohen, executive VP, was at the recent National Association of TV Program Executives gathering in San Francisco looking at the new product, although she says "Everyone knows that we're probably not going to seriously buy much until we're in at least 5-million homes."
That is not far off, Cohen says, although she admits she has a peculiar problem, given the quality that the network already owns.
"It's hard. You have to be really picky. When you already own some of the most famous animated shows it doesn't make you inclined to license any old animated show," she says.
Turner has the Hanna-Barbera library, with "The Flintstones" and "The Jetsons ," but with the purchase of the MGM library came all the pre-Warner Bros.' cartoons with the early "Bugs Bunny" and "Loony Toons" shows.
"There's also a lot of Hanna-Barbera material that is not very well known and it plays very young," says Cohen. "But it's perfect for our pre-school blocks."
The Cartoon Network is also involved in the Turner Family Showcase, a new quarterly project featuring animated versions of children's literature. It's part of Turner's literacy program.
Social responsibility is increasingly important to programmers. For several years, children's cartoons were often simply vehicles to sell toys or to tie into the latest fad. That sort of programming still exists but it is diminishing.
Vanessa Coffey, vice president of Nickelodeon, says that's good for children. "Recently there have been high-quality shows for kids that are intellectually stimulating as opposed to the Saturday morning junk that speaks down to kids and is not inspiring at all," Coffey says.
Fox's Margaret Loesch argues that animation for children has improved across the board, including the shows on Saturday mornings.
"People say they have no redeeming value," she admits, "but I have felt that the people who made those statements really didn't look at what was on television. For many years, we've all participated in making good programs."
Fox Children's Network also pro-duces public-service shorts and vig-nettes dealing with street safety, nutrition, peer pressure and equality.
"I think we can improve but I don't think Saturday morning deserves that blanket condemnation," says Loesch. "Each network has several shows they can be proud of."
