|
The Wiggles
Broadcast 6.30pm on 16/07/2003 The Wiggles in action The Wiggles are a phenomenon that has swept the world. Four men in skivvies have set new standards in early childhood entertainment. What started out as a desire to combine their passion for music and teaching has led to franchises in Asia and huge sales of Wiggly merchandise - it has made the boys very wealthy. But when you talk to them the key to their success is crystal clear – they care deeply about what they do. The four wiggles - Anthony, Murray, Jeff & Greg GEORGE NEGUS: Well, anyone who's got kids - hi, guys, if you're watching - knows how insatiably inquisitive they can be in their early years, and also how infuriatingly short their attention spans are. Well, the blokes in our next piece have turned captivating kids into big business - indeed, a global business. Here's Jane Cunningham. (LIVELY MUSIC) (The Wiggles sing) # Testing # Testing # One, two, three # One, two, three... # JANE CUNNINGHAM, REPORTER: Ask any four-year-old in this country what's purple, red, blue and yellow, and they'll tell you in a heartbeat it's... (Jane and children shout) The Wiggles! MURRAY: Hi, everyone. I'm Murray! (The Wiggles sing) # Music that is fun # Oh, yeah! # Let's make some music! Yes, everyone... # JANE CUNNINGHAM: From their humble beginnings, the Wiggles have become a tour de force, releasing CDs, videos, toys, clothing, as well as starring in their own movies and their own TV show. Their upcoming tour of America has already sold 140,000 tickets. It all started at Macquarie University, where Anthony, Greg and Murray were all studying early childhood education. Dr Kathleen Warren was one of their lecturers. DR KATHLEEN WARREN: They were excellent students. The three of them did very well throughout their course, both in their theoretical and practical studies, and, um...I don't ever remember anyone saying a word against them. They were good students. ANTHONY FIELD: The Macquarie University Institute of Early Childhood Studies opened my eyes to the fascinating world of child development and where children are coming from. THE WIGGLES: Hi, everyone. We're the Wiggles! GREG: I'm Greg. MURRAY: I'm Murray. ANTHONY: I'm Anthony. JEFF: I'm Jeff. MURRAY COOK: I wanted to teach, but looking at early childhood, it seemed like there was a lot more of the arts involved in it, and that was something I was really interested in. In early childhood education there's lots of...you use a lot of music and art and movement, so I thought that was something that I could really commit to and really get involved in and enjoy. (FOOTAGE FROM WIGGLES VIDEO) MURRAY: Guys! It's time to Wiggle! CHILDREN: Yeah! ANTHONY FIELD: The Wiggles was not a commercial thing, it just came from university, and then, of course, Jeff came along. He didn't have the early childhood background, but he had the music background. But...yeah, that's kind of how it started. JANE CUNNINGHAM: It turned out to be a winning combination and there is no doubt that their passion for the subject and academic background gave the Wiggles a great start. MURRAY COOK: What we learned at university has really been the bedrock that we've built everything of the Wiggles on. GREG PAGE: Quite often we refer to what we do now as teaching a larger classroom, because so many of the skills that we learned...management skills about how you talk to children - not talking down to them, talking to them in a way that makes them feel like they're an equal with you. MURRAY: We've got the oscilloscope behind us which is showing us the soundwaves - that's wonderful - and we've got our wonderful friends down here too. MURRAY COOK: You learn that children think in a really different way to adults. It's not just that they don't know as much as adults, they actually think qualitatively different to adults. ANTHONY FIELD: You can see how sometimes other performers we've done shows with who aren't early childhood-based, and they have unrealistic expectations of the audience. Like, "Everybody, sit down now." It's not gonna happen! Relax! MURRAY COOK: We ask them to sit down, but if they don't, well, they don't. DR KATHLEEN WARREN: Children are quite a demanding audience, but they're also a very honest audience. So that if children aren't enjoying the program they're watching, they will walk away, they'll...not bother, go to sleep. (Laughs) But if you go to a Wiggles live performance, you feel it's a very interactive performance the whole time. Both the children and the performers are singing and dancing throughout. It's really quite an exciting performance to watch and to be part of. ANTHONY FIELD: In America we play to up to 11,000 people, we've had at a show, or 8,000 in Toronto? MURRAY COOK: Something like that, yeah. ANTHONY FIELD: Um, so that's...that's...we didn't learn about that at university. MURRAY COOK: So you use movement and things like that - you move around the stage, so even the little ones are getting... Even if they don't understand words, they've got something to watch. JEFF FATT: There's more exaggerated movements, so you make big movements on a big stage. GREG PAGE: Yeah, it really has been a combination of our passion for teaching and also our passion for music and entertainment as well. But as the guys said, when we started out, I don't think any of us had done anything on such a large scale in entertainment terms, so we had to learn a lot. But also too, we're constantly getting refreshers on the education side of things as well. DR KATHLEEN WARREN: It's the simplicity of what they do, but that can be misleading, I think. I think it is underpinned by their really great deep knowledge of where children are coming from. ANTHONY FIELD: It is based on solid early childhood philosophies, and children are the same all around the world. Um...all the cultures, uh...every culture sings lullabies to children when they're babies, um...and children are egocentric all around the world. DR KATHLEEN WARREN: When I take their songs and some of the dances to children who live in traditional villages in Papua New Guinea, they are just as popular. These songs are just as popular, and the children get just as much pleasure out of them as do children in Western nations. JANE CUNNINGHAM: They have successfully crossed international boundaries and set up their own Wiggly franchises. The Taiwanese Wiggles are up and running, China, Japan and England are about to follow suit, and for the original four, this all adds up to an income that outstrips Kylie Minogue or Nicole Kidman. MURRAY COOK: We do get lots of mail from parents, and often parents say, "Thank you for being part of our lives," and they really feel that, and that's really gratifying. Also, we get lots of mail and feedback from parents of children with special needs - particularly, say, children with autism and things like that - and said we've made a real connection with those children and it's actually helped their lives. So I think that's really gratifying, and that's, for me, a measure of success as well. ANTHONY FIELD: We got into it because we WERE passionate about making music, just doing an album. And everything that's followed has been...fantastic. It's been...it's been great fun! GEORGE NEGUS: If you think about it, it was probably the Wiggles who reinvented the skivvy, apart, of course, from their other more educational achievements. |
 |
 |