DreamWorks Animation’s channel boss, Eric Ellenbogen, talks about the power of pandas, dragons, gronckles and going beyond the borders of Berk, binge viewing, changing everything, putting all his eggs into one basket and the pros/cons of launching a linear channel as part of a multi-screen strategy from day one.

Eric Ellenbogen has two priorities in rolling out DreamWorks Animation’s first kids/family channel in Asia. The first is that content, ultimately, has to be on every screen. The second is a preference, where possible, for exclusive partnerships; the approach, he says, is to “put all our eggs into one basket and watch the basket carefully”.

Ellenbogen, co-head, international TV and DreamWorks Classics, says DreamWorks Animation’s new subscription offering, which includes the company’s first linear channel ever, has been designed for a multi-screen universe, with all rights across all platforms available to partners in Asia. “It’s not only TV,” he stresses, adding that distribution conversations are part of an evolving relationship between content owners and platforms. “We don’t know where audiences are going to end up... and we need partners able to take them there,” he says.

A full suite of online, on-demand, apps and games as well as options such as ‘download to go’ run alongside the linear channel. Consumer access points include free online/mobile video shorts, games and some content and range up to full content-rich apps authenticated with subscription partners.

“We aim to make our content very easily accessible,” Ellengbogen says, adding his voice to broad industry opinion that “making content ubiquitous, available everywhere, is the best defence against piracy”.

Being late to Asia is being presented as an advantage. Ellenbogen says the benefit of being “late” into the market is that “we arrive without legacy issues... we have a complete set of rights available for all markets”.

The channel has announced one carriage deal – its first in the world – atpress time. DreamWorks launched in Thailand at the beginning of August as part of an exclusive carriage deal with Thai pay-TV platform CTH. The channel went up in English, adding a fully dubbed Thai schedule at the beginning of September.

CTH subscribers can access the DreamWorks channel anywhere from THB99/US$2.84 to THB499/US$14 depending on their subscription packages. CTH says it expects the channel to have 500,000 subscribers in six months and a million by the end of the first 12 months on air. “It’s not that ambitious,” CTH executive chairman, Chirdsak Kukiattinun said, adding: “Most of the time kids control the remote control”.

The HD channel is distributed across the region by HBO Asia, which will also handle marketing and technical services out of Singapore.

DreamWorks’ signature originals, such as All Hail King Julien and The Adventures of Puss in Boots, have been included in the launch grid, along with adventure series Casper’s Scare School, and new original action series Dinotrux, which premiered on Netflix on 14 August.

The DreamWorks channel will also present a daily morning pre-school block, DreamWorks Junior, featuring new productions such as Raa Raa The Noisy Lion, which is part of the Chapman Entertainment U.K. slate that DreamWorks Animation acquired in 2013, and Guess with Jess.

DreamWorks Animation’s original series for Netflix, Dragons: Race to the Edge, inspired by the How to Train Your Dragon theatrical franchise, build out the schedule in the fourth quarter of this year.

Pro-social advertising options are being explored for about five minutes an hour.

The decision to launch a linear channel as part of a multi-platform, multi-media offering rather than prioritise programme licensing/sales was made because of the amount of content DreamWorks has available. In the original announcement made in December 2014, DreamWorks Animation promised “more original content than any other kids channel in the region”. The company also said the channel would tap more than 2,000 hours of existing DreamWorks TV content in addition to more than 1,000 half-hours of original animation the company currently has in production.

“Our slate has more than 1,000 original half hours. The [licensing] market cannot absorb that amount of content,” Ellenbogen says. A combined linear/online/on-demand offering opens up limitless opportunities... The second screen has no shelf space limitations, and that is very attractive to us,” he adds.

The linear channel remains an anchor. Ellenbogen calls linear services “the ultimate discovery vehicle... it will always be there”.

The channel arrives in Asia with its local production box already ticked. Two new series are in the works in Korea (details are not yet available). The new season of George of the Jungle, the co-production with Singapore-based August Media, is already on air.

Asia is part of DreamWorks Animation’s global production network, including the U.K. France and Canada. “We are working all over the world to deliver content for the channel and are completely open to the idea of locally produced content as well as acquisitions that may work for the channel in different day parts,” Ellenbogen says.

If Asia’s patchy broadband infrastructure may – temporarily – be an impediment to online ambitions, Ellenbogen is optimistic about the connected experience. Kids and family, he says, keeps churn down and is a big subs acquisition and retention driver for Netflix in the U.S.

Ellenbogen expects all the shows to end up on OTT, and says the multi-screen unit is the beneficiary of DreamWorks Animation’s theatrical efforts. “The synergies are tremendous,” he says, adding: “Audiences come to OTT because of the movie titles but they stay there because of the television series... Binge viewing has become a cornerstone of OTT.”

The new channel’s competitors are not only the slew of well-established and powerful kids programming incumbents in Asia. Ellenbogen lists toys, games, short attention spans...

“From a programming perspective, we have something different from what’s out there. I’m not saying it’s easy, because it’s never easy, but we don’t have the task of explaining How to Train your Dragon. Chances are the audience knows about it already”. – Janine Stein

This article first appeared in ContentAsia Issue 3, 2015, published in August 2015