| Hoop-dee-doo, kids love a Wiggly world
HI-5 may be the new kids on the preschool TV block but it's The Wiggles who remain as big as The Beatles among the under-fives. Three years ago The Wiggles did their first US tour as the support act for Barney the Dinosaur. Two years ago this month they took their first solo tour to New York. Last month they returned from their third tour this year, having played to 250,000 people and, in a couple of cities, outsold pop prince Justin Timberlake, who was also on the road. "The American success of The Wiggles is literally unprecedented," says "fifth Wiggle" Paul Field, the group's general manager of operations and communications. "The Wiggles were the first of a kind. There was nothing like them before them." But constant touring takes a toll and the skivvy-and-slacks clad foursome, really Murray Cook (the Red Wiggle), Jeff Fatt (Purple), Anthony Field (Blue) and Greg Page (Yellow), are about at their limit. Although videos (11 million sold), CDs and live shows remain the group's core business, Field says they are now planning to do more television. The group has made surprisingly little TV, in a dozen years only three series, the first two of them self-financed. "What stopped us for the first few years was that no one really understood The Wiggles, or could see us working, and it costs a lot of money to make TV," says Field. The group's third series, Lights, Camera, Action, a co-production with the ABC, goes to air in the US on the Playhouse Disney channel next month. "That will probably do them for a good 12 months. But next year, particularly as America continues to grow, we certainly intend to produce more TV series," Field says. "That might be by ourselves, we'll just wait and see. There are so many interested parties in The Wiggles these days that it's something we can deeply consider rather than taking the first offer that comes our way." A bigger presence on the box would create one more area of competition with Hi-5. But both camps pooh-pooh any talk of rivalry. Hi-5 co-creator Helena Harris says she understands why the groups get compared, but "we couldn't be more different in music style and all that sort of stuff". However, The Wiggles camp sees more obvious similarities. Field says that in the early days of Hi-5 he even heard the group described as combining "a little bit of Wiggle and a little bit of Spice" (as in the Spice Girls). "They've certainly looked at what The Wiggles have done and seen what works and taken it in a bit of a different direction. And that's cool," he says. "To me [Hi-5 is] skewed a bit older and a bit more towards girls. And they're very fashionable, while The Wiggles is the band that fashion forgot." Both groups are expecting imitators. "When we took Hi-5 into England with the pilot I was so worried that we would get ripped off, and we still haven't. I can't imagine why," Harris says. Says Field: "Given our success in America, give it 35 seconds and they will have to start coming through any day now." Sally Jackson |
| How child's play pays
By Sally Jackson September 18, 2003 In a cavernous television studio in the backblocks of Sydney, 200 little kids are jumping up and down, doing hand moves and singing. Except for one small boy who has lost his mum (who may be the woman on the footpath out front, dragging deeply on a cigarette), they watch entranced as five 20-somethings in neon costumes dance across the blindingly bright set, vigorously mouthing their pre-taped song, Holiday. The lip-syncing performers are Charli Robinson, Nathan Foley, Tim Harding, Kathleen De Leon and Kellie Hoggart. Together they comprise children's pop group Hi-5, and if you're knee-to-thigh height most likely they rock your world. The day Media visits the set they are taping the 200th episode of the Hi-5 TV series, which last week started its fifth season on the Nine Network. For the grand finale of the episode (which airs on October 3) the children have to form a conga-line and side-wind through the studio as balloons and streamers tumble down. Beforehand, Hi-5 creator and executive producer Helena Harris is tense – "The longest conga we've done before is 100 kids" – but the spectacle goes on to tape without a hitch. To the untutored eye it looks, as it's meant to, like child's play. But there is much more to it than that. Over the past 15 years P (for preschool) TV has become seriously big business, and nobody in the world is more successful in this particular business right now than Hi-5 and fellow Australian group The Wiggles, two productions with a somewhat similar look and identical – that is, enormous – marketing appeal. The top dogs are the Wiggles, four skivvy-wearing blokes who recently returned from yet another wildly popular tour of the US (see box). But with Hi-5, masterminded by Harris, poised for a global push next year will the younger team soon be breathing down the Wiggles' candy-coloured turtlenecks? On the Hi-5 camp's list of projects for 2004 is a proposal to create a foreign-language version of the group, most likely in Mexico. Producers in Germany and several other countries have also expressed interest in home-grown Hi-5s and Harris expects to see as many as five foreign-language versions by decade's end. (Meanwhile, the Australian program is already seen in 61 countries by an average weekly audience of 5 million.) This is an avenue also being explored by the Wiggles, who are already being cloned throughout Asia by their regional licence-holder, Disney. A Taiwanese Wiggles was formed last year and a Japanese version will follow next year, with more to come. Spokesman Paul Field says the group is considering similar licensing deals in Europe – raising the not-too-distant prospect of dozens of Hi-5 and Wiggles clones chanting Holiday and Hot Potato respectively in every major tongue. "There could be. But one at a time," says Field. "We grew up watching Sesame Street and there's no reason why down the track this music couldn't work for generations of children in other countries. And there's no way you could expose your music to those areas unless you did it locally." In the meantime, the two groups are busily carving up the rest of the English-speaking world between them. So far the Wiggles have focused on the US and Hi-5 on Britain, while dividing the Australian market roughly equally. According to merchandising specialist Fred Gaffney, who is the Wiggles' merchandising consultant for Australia and New Zealand, the domestic retail market for children's toys under licence is worth about $500 million and The Wiggles and Hi-5 account for about 10 per cent of it. Internationally the upside is all but limitless. Gaffney values the US retail market for licensed Wiggles goods at some $US100 million ($152 million) and believes the 12-year-old group is now entrenched as a "classic" brand, the kind that makes up about 70 per cent of the stock on toyshop shelves. The half-decade mark, which Hi-5 is approaching, is also considered a marketing milestone, he says. "After five years you are very well considered. You are on the eve of becoming a classic brand." The challenge for both groups will be crossing over into each other's major market. "We are now looking at perhaps going back into the UK and, if we do, in what way we can do that," Field says. Hi-5's US strategy is also in its early days. Says Harris: "The Wiggles are huge in America and we're now huge in England. Whether we will work as well in America, whether The Wiggles will work as well in England, remains to be seen." Hi-5 took its first step into the US last year when the Discovery network acquired the format rights to the series. However, Discovery insisted on American accents, so the shows have all had to be re- shot with a US cast. (To avoid confusion, the North American version will only be seen in the US and Canada.) The US series goes to air on the Discovery Kids channel in late February. Merchandising deals are already in place for Hi-5 apparel, footwear, stationery, homewares and bedding. In Britain, Hi-5 has been on air since January and is "rating its socks off", Harris says. Having already made a promotional visit in April, the group launched its first CD there on Monday and will back it up with another week-long visit next month. In February they return for a full 20-city, 105-performance tour coinciding with two or three video releases. "England really love the Australian cast," Harris says. "When they go over next year they're going to be superstars." Harris isn't surprised to see two Australian acts doing so well overseas. What she didn't expect is the lack of competition. "There are kind of only two bands in the world catering for this age group and that's Hi-5 and The Wiggles," she says. "It's hard to believe, but you go to England and America and there isn't anybody else out there." Hi-5 is not the first kids' act Harris has taken to the top. The experienced director and producer became interested in children's programming in the late 1980s, after having kids of her own, and moved into the genre while working at the ABC – cutting her teeth (so to speak) on Bananas in Pyjamas. At the time, it hadn't really dawned that there was business upside in P TV, she says. "It was pre-Teletubbies. Thomas the Tank was around, and Play School and Humphrey, but none of these were big in the merchandising area." Under Harris's hand, B1 and B2 changed all that, becoming a global phenomenon seen in 70 countries by about 100 million children and generating some 600 spin-off products. "I learned an enormous amount about merchandising and those sorts of things from Bananas," Harris says. "The first time around I did the whole thing by gut. This time, once you know all the pitfalls you know how to plan for them, so it was much easier." In 1996 she left the ABC to start her own company, Kids Like Us, with friend and fellow ABC alumnus Posie Graeme-Evans (whose directorship of the company has been transferred to her husband since she was appointed head of drama at Nine). Auditions for the Hi-5 cast were held in mid-1998, the first series went to air in January 1999 and the program was popular straight away. "There was incredible demand for our merchandise, our music and videos. We released those very quickly," says Harris. "And also for the fashion we had on the show – a buyer from Target picked up our fashion range off the back of the pilot. We did our first stage tour, which was also really successful. And every year Channel Nine has bought another series." The TV program is just one leaf of the Hi-5 lettuce. Other layers of the business are its videos and DVDs (15 so far) and music (seven CDs so far, including Holiday, to be released on Monday), its apparel lines (day and sleep-wear ranges are available at Target and K Mart) and its general merchandise, including print books, audio books, magazines, toys, edible goods (such as yoghurt, dried fruit and orange juice) and assorted other products (quilt covers, clocks). Underpinning it all are the live tours. The next one, called Come On and Party, kicks off in October, and no doubt will receive a rapturous welcome from thousands of kiddie consumers. Manufacturing is done under licence, with royalties being paid to Kids Like Us and Nine, which is joint-venture partner in both Hi-5 and an earlier Harris/Graeme-Evans project, Cushion Kids. This is Nine's first experience of mass-market and international merchandising, which is an area the commercial networks have been tardy getting into, although the ABC has been doing it very profitably for some time through its ABC Enterprises arm. "The ABC . . . would probably be the closest model to what we're doing," says Martin Hersov, Nine's director of strategic marketing. "Nine's core strength is advertising, ratings, revenues, prime time. This is about looking at additional revenue streams outside of prime-time, and Hi-5 is a very significant opportunity in that." Emboldened by its success, next year the network is planning a second big merchandising project to spin off a new children's series, New McDonald's Farm, which is scheduled to start in April. "It's also aimed at preschool children and there will be a lot of merchandising coming off the back of that as well," says Hersov. "We will be looking for a full range of merchandising, videos, DVDs and music." Meanwhile, Harris's energies will remain entirely absorbed by Hi-5 "for at least a couple of years", she says. As well as being co-creator and co-owner of the group, she oversees all the merchandising, signs off every script, views all the shows at dress-run stage and sits in on the final edits. She keeps just as tight a grip on the Hi-5 brand name – ensuring parents will never be pestered for a Hi-5 gun, for example. The group's image is also carefully controlled. When a promotional picture of the 200th episode celebrations is sent out with a bottle of champagne visible in the shot a publicity person is quickly in touch to demand that if the photo is used the bottle be cropped, "for obvious reasons". But Harris also emphasises that Hi-5 is much more to her than a brand. "I wanted to make a positive difference, to make sure that there was something out there that would enhance a child's life," she says of her goals for the group. "Merchandising came about as a way to put more money back into children's television . . . The layers of educational value that go into the show are really the foundation of it." Even the simple-seeming dances are "specially choreographed to link the right and left hemispheres of the brain to help with co-ordination and balance", she says. "We get extraordinary, amazing stories from parents all the time saying how Hi-5 has helped their child so much. You just think sometimes that one letter makes it all worthwhile." A BIG THANKS TO MARIA IN OZ FOR THIS ARTICLE Hoop-dee-doo, kids love a Wiggly world HI-5 may be the new kids on the preschool TV block but it's The Wiggles who remain as big as The Beatles among the under-fives. Three years ago The Wiggles did their first US tour as the support act for Barney the Dinosaur. Two years ago this month they took their first solo tour to New York. Last month they returned from their third tour this year, having played to 250,000 people and, in a couple of cities, outsold pop prince Justin Timberlake, who was also on the road. "The American success of The Wiggles is literally unprecedented," says "fifth Wiggle" Paul Field, the group's general manager of operations and communications. "The Wiggles were the first of a kind. There was nothing like them before them." But constant touring takes a toll and the skivvy-and-slacks clad foursome, really Murray Cook (the Red Wiggle), Jeff Fatt (Purple), Anthony Field (Blue) and Greg Page (Yellow), are about at their limit. Although videos (11 million sold), CDs and live shows remain the group's core business, Field says they are now planning to do more television. The group has made surprisingly little TV, in a dozen years only three series, the first two of them self-financed. "What stopped us for the first few years was that no one really understood The Wiggles, or could see us working, and it costs a lot of money to make TV," says Field. The group's third series, Lights, Camera, Action, a co-production with the ABC, goes to air in the US on the Playhouse Disney channel next month. "That will probably do them for a good 12 months. But next year, particularly as America continues to grow, we certainly intend to produce more TV series," Field says. "That might be by ourselves, we'll just wait and see. There are so many interested parties in The Wiggles these days that it's something we can deeply consider rather than taking the first offer that comes our way." A bigger presence on the box would create one more area of competition with Hi-5. But both camps pooh-pooh any talk of rivalry. Hi-5 co-creator Helena Harris says she understands why the groups get compared, but "we couldn't be more different in music style and all that sort of stuff". However, The Wiggles camp sees more obvious similarities. Field says that in the early days of Hi-5 he even heard the group described as combining "a little bit of Wiggle and a little bit of Spice" (as in the Spice Girls). "They've certainly looked at what The Wiggles have done and seen what works and taken it in a bit of a different direction. And that's cool," he says. "To me [Hi-5 is] skewed a bit older and a bit more towards girls. And they're very fashionable, while The Wiggles is the band that fashion forgot." Both groups are expecting imitators. "When we took Hi-5 into England with the pilot I was so worried that we would get ripped off, and we still haven't. I can't imagine why," Harris says. Says Field: "Given our success in America, give it 35 seconds and they will have to start coming through any day now." Sally Jackson |